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"So, you come here often?" The woman flirtatiously smirks.
Mira snorts, letting the ice pebbles clink against the glass as she twirls the cup in her hand.
This girl has been eyeing her down for weeks at this point. Not only inside this bar, but also at Hon University, where both of them attend. She's not the only one, of course--Mira's gotten quite used to the attention since her first day at Uni--but she's gotten better at noticing her fans individually.
A green-haired girl with an undercut and huge loop earrings isn't hard to miss either.
"What do you think?" Mira entertains the topic, answering with the same suggestiveness as the first question.
The girl awkwardly chuckles, as if unsure of the next steps. "Well, ah—I've seen you here before, so I was wondering if it was a habit."
Mira hums as she brings the Mojito glass to her lips, sipping just the surface to whet her appetite. "Friday's when I'm around. Want my class schedule too or...?"
"No! No, no, no need for that. Sorry, I just wanted to have some small talk with you. Didn't mean to make it sound weird."
So awkward and so nervous. The girl doesn't seem like a virgin, but the lack of confidence certainly strikes as so.
A bottom, Mira concludes.
"I've seen you around too," She teases, leaning in closer as much as the fixed bar stools can allow. "Around here, around the dorms. I'm assuming you're a freshman...?"
"Yeah." The girl beams at the recognition. "And you're a sophomore, right?"
"So you do know about me." Mira smirks.
The girl grows even more nervous. "Well, you're kinda like a campus celebrity. It's hard not to hear the rumors about you."
"And which ones have you heard?"
"Ah..." The girl scratches her nape, eyes darting around the ambient. "That you are the only daughter of two famous diplomats--"
"Uhum."
"—majoring in international relations—"
"Yup."
"—and that you're down for sleeping with random girls?"
The last part flies off her tongue as if running away from the consequences.
Mira simply grins. "All correct so far, but you're missing a big one."
"I am?"
She puts down the Mojito, turning to face the girl with the full seriousness her half-drunk face could muster. "It's a one-night only, so no catching feelings. Got it?"
The girl pauses for a second to contemplate the implications of what was said. Her dumbfounded face makes Mira roll her eyes.
"Isn't that why you're here? Because you want to sleep with me?"
The girl's eyes widen. Caught unprepared by such straightforwardness, all she can do is nod.
"Abby, put it on my tab, please," Mira tells the bartender, referring to her drink. It's not like she was in a hurry to not pay for it now, but she enjoys the casualness of the phrase. Being a regular meant affording the trust of the establishment that she will return to pay the bills. Even if every Friday she leaves the bar with a different girl, she always comes back to pay her dues.
That's enough loyalty to last her a lifetime.
"Where do you wanna go?" She asks while stretching her legs after a long period of sitting down.
The girl shrugs. "My dorm?"
"Alright. We can take my car."
Love's a game, people say, and playing it usually involves smart tactics and dirty tricks to "win" the big prize of sex. Given Mira's attractiveness, she could be considered a final boss, one who only the people with matching physique and a heavy arsenal of flirts could stand a chance to win her affections.
So her dates are always surprised at how easy she actually is.
She can't be bothered by outdated courting rules. She doesn't care whether there's a proper order of things before you see a stranger naked, much less the rituals that are included before, during, and after. She has her own playbook, which she never strays from:
One-night only.
Never with the same person.
Never catching feelings.
And that's it. Easy to understand, easy to follow through, easy to make it happen.
That way, every Friday she finds a woman to give the best night of their life for the small price of disappearing out of her life the very next day. She has gotten some complaints about this exchange in the past, but as the rumors spread, more people came her way hoping to take the one-night deal, and only a few were dumb enough to think it meant something.
But that's how games work. Some people win, some people lose. And Mira always made sure everyone woke up satisfied with the match results. Her dates get to start the weekend with wobbly legs and an obvious shine to their skin, while she gets to enjoy another night of not having to sleep alone in the cold, untidy sheets of her bed.
Another Friday passes, and everybody's happy.
So happy.
Second semester of her sophomore year. New class schedule, new professors, same-old bar. This time, she came accompanied by some of her classmates.
"DUDE, I'm only taking Professor Won 'cause my friend said he's an easy grader, but that man is out for blood this semester!"
"Thank fucking god I decided to take him during my first year, he was much nicer before."
"What do you think happened for him to change so quickly?"
"Heard his wife left him and took the kids."
"The guy teaches international relations but can't even manage his own!"
The cackles that follow are worse than hyenas—at least the animal has some sympathy for its prey. Mira has long tapped out of the conversation, sitting within the 8-person table merely to satisfy her monthly duty of networking, an essential skill to have if you're aiming to be a diplomat someday.
The half-empty beer bottle in her hand functions as an hourglass of how long she has to find an excuse to leave before her classmates order another round for the whole table. An excuse can come in many shapes and forms, from overdue assignments to aiding in the search for a missing hamster. Mira's favorite excuses, however, are even broader than their category: blondes, brunettes, ravens, gingers, tall, short, lean, muscular, curvy, femme, butch, or any girl anywhere in between or far away....She had never been a picky eater. So long as they followed her playbook, any girl could rescue her out of the entrapment of a bad outing.
As she scouts the whole bar with an attentive gaze, the challenge becomes finding a girl she hasn't slept with yet.
Luckily for her, two faces are unrecognizable.
"If I throw a reverse card, does that mean it goes back to me?" A girl of small stature sitting impatiently at the bar top asks, holding colorful cards like a spread-out peacock tail between the digits of her equally colorful fingernails.
"Wait, let me check the rules." The girl in front of her answers. Medium-height and broad-shouldered, keeping her back impressively straight while looking down at her own deck of cards, she could easily be on the school's football team if not for the fact that there is no such thing in their Korean University.
A thin pile of discarded cards sits on the countertop, while a much bigger one is still within the box they have brought with them. While the purple-haired girl opens the game manual like an old map, the one with the low space buns sighs, intentionally dropping her head on the pile of cards and messing with whatever order they had beforehand.
"Rumi, party game rules are created for groups of three or more. We need to improvise."
"Zo, the developers had to have thought of this. There's no way they never considered the possibility of two people playing by themselves."
"Not everything needs to be made by the book, Ru. Let's just say it skips your turn!"
"But that's what the cancel card does."
The smaller girl groans, and Mira occupies her smile with the mouth of her bottle.
"Mira, are you really the teaching assistant for Professor Baek this semester?" A commentary is thrown her way by one of the people at her table.
Her eyes snap back to her classmates, and her joyful expression disappears in an instant. "Yeah, so?"
Another person chimes in. "Why? You need the money or something?"
She opens her mouth to speak, but flinches at an arm hooking around her shoulders and rashly tugging her closer to the man sitting beside her.
"'f Course she doesn't need the money! You kiddin'?" His beer breath is intoxicating from this distance. "She's jus' looking for new freshman to sleep with. Freshman, more like freshmeat, heh?" He opens a big grin, but his joke doesn't land quite the way he hoped. A few awkward chuckles intensify to snickers once Mira sinks her nails in his hand and shoves him off her side.
"Mind your damn business, asshole." She commands.
"Augh! What the fuck?!" He stares incredulously at his scratched hand; not a single drop of blood spilled out, and yet he acts as if he'd just been shot. "You fuckin' bitch! I was just tryin' to help!"
She stays aloof, crossing her arms. "I never asked for it."
The rest of the table trades giggles and teasing nudges at one another, hoping to watch the following fight from their front-row seats.
He grits his teeth, pointing aggressively at her. "That's why you keep sleepin' around with other females instead of bein' with nice guys like me!"
"You? Nice?" She scoffs.
"Yeah, ME! I was gonna invite you out to a date tonight, but you know what? I don't wanna risk gettin' an STD from a stupid fuckin' whor—OUCH!" An UNO card hits the back of his head after being thrown with the precision of a Shin-Kal. He huffs and turns around to look for the culprit right as the black-haired girl whips her head to turn away, her shoulders shaking as she giggles. The other with the long braid tries to hide the UNO cards she holds, but it's too late.
His chair screeches on the floor as he rises from it, but he doesn't get very far before Mira pushes him down with a loud thud of his butt against the seat.
She calmly scoops the +2 red Card from the floor. "I'll deal with this." She tells him, as if taking his side on the matter.
He stays seated with the rest of the table, all on the edge of their seats while they watch Mira stride in the direction of the bar top with an unshaken expression.
"Did you throw this?"
The card, slotted between two of her fingers, no doubt belongs to the UNO cards of the two girls playing. They, however, hesitate to confirm or deny it. They stare at her for a second, trying to read whatever emotion she could be feeling at that moment, but Mira's resting bitch face strikes fear by default.
"…Maybe?" The smaller girl gives a nervous grin accompanied by a shrug, while the other remains frozen, muscles unnecessarily tense.
With her long arms, Mira reaches between them and places the card on top of the discard pile. She then gives one last judgmental glare to the people back at her table, and then takes a seat right next to the black-haired girl, her lips curving into a relaxed smile. "Good aim. Mind if I play too? Can't stand the losers at my table."
The taut atmosphere disperses, and the relief that Mira's words bring to the two girls is visible in their discrete exhale.
"You're more than welcome to." The purple-haired girl shyly says, taking all the cards from the table to begin an elaborate shuffling process that has Mira impressed.
"That'd be great, actually!" The other girl's excitement is palpable. "We always struggle playing party games as a duo."
"Why don't you get more people?" Mira notes.
"We've been trying to make a board games club at Hon Uni, but nobody ever shows up to our meetings," The black-haired girl pouts. "We play with other people sometimes, but everybody keeps saying they're busy, it sucks."
"So you two are from Hon University?" Mira asks.
The other girl spares her a puzzled glance before returning to shuffling the cards. "We're first-years, starting our second semester now. I'm Rumi. I'm in Professor Baek's Political Theory class, not sure if it rings a bell…?"
Mira hums, scratching her chin. The name Rumi is very, very familiar. And now that she really thinks about it, she might have seen this name in the attendance sheet of Professor Baek, as well as a purple blur raising a hand and speaking quite often during class.
"You're one of this semester's students." Mira's eyes narrow, analyzing Rumi's face to make sure it'd stay engraved into her mind. "Can't believe I don't remember you."
Rumi seems to fumble the card shuffling for a moment, making some of the cards fly off her fingers and fall on the table in a scattered mess. She hurries to organize them back again.
"How about me? Have you ever noticed me, Mira?"
She is slightly taken by surprise at her name being spoken by a girl she struggles to remember, but she knows better not to doubt her own reputation. She cocks her head and gives the same scrutinizing stare, disregarding the blush she draws from the smaller girl. "I've seen you before, but I don't remember where."
"Let me help ya then. Caham," She fake coughs, putting on an annoying customer service voice she clearly uses on the daily. "Sorry, I didn't find a package with your name. You'll get an email from us when one arrives for you."
That tone of voice is instantly recognizable.
"You work in the mailroom!"
The girl chuckles, smiling fondly. "And you come to us almost every day, no matter how many times I tell you nothing arrived for you yet! But I kinda get it. I'm impatient too." She extends a hand, giving a bright, shining smile. "I'm Zoey, nice to finally meet you!"
Mira takes the handshake, noticing how Zoey's hand is cradled by hers, given their size difference. "Nice to meet you, too. Sorry to keep bothering you, I've been waiting for a package for a while now."
"It's fine! Actually, I wouldn't mind if you stopped more often. I've seen you a bunch, but we never even talked before."
Rumi distributes seven cards to each of them, and puts the remaining amount on a Draw pile. "Do you know how to play Uno?"
They each take their sets of cards, and Rumi begins the game by taking the top card of the pile and revealing its number—a blue 3.
"I've played before, probably in high school or something. Who starts?"
"Why don't you start? Rums and I are basically pros at this point, so we won't go easy on ya." Zoey teasingly winks while Rumi fondly smiles.
Mira begins the game by placing a blue 1. "How come you two are so good if you struggle to play together?"
Rumi plays next—same color, different number. "We used to be part of a board games club back in high school, so we had a lot of people to play with. Now it's just us, and since most of the games we played back then require a minimum of three people, we haven't played some in a while."
Mira raises her brows. "So you two are from the same high school?"
Zoey continues; also blue, another number. "Yup!"
Mira changes the color to yellow. "Same major too?"
Rumi keeps the game going. "No. I'm majoring in Political Science and Korean studies, and Zo's doing Game Design with a minor in Creative Writing."
"I don't think I've ever seen people from these departments hanging out before." Mira comments.
Zoey proudly giggles. "That's because we're built different. Rumi and I are like two peas in a pod; two ducks in a pond; two coins in a pouch; two chairs in a porch; two—"
"I think she got it, Zo." Rumi chuckles.
"I'm just trying to highlight how close we are, my dear Rums." Zoey fakes a scholarly accent. "We have risen beyond our differences, achieving the superior state of compatibility by establishing a connection based on communication first and foremost, creating a bond so strong and tight not even the strongest winds of a hurricane could tear us apart—!
"Zo, you can't play two equal cards." Rumi interrupts by stopping Zoey from placing two Green 5s on top of the card pile.
"Why not!?"
"Mira might not know these homebrew rules."
"But everybody knows that if you have two of the same card, you can play them together! Right, Mira?"
Mira, quietly observing, realizes she's inside the discussion now. "I only remember the basic rules, so this is news to me."
"See? No homebrews." Rumi gives Zoey a smug smile and plays her card.
Zoey huffs and plays right next. "The homebrews are what makes the game fun!"
"The game is fun on its own."
"It could be more fun with a little help."
"It's simpler with no help."
"What's the point of simple if it's boring?!"
"Oh, you're bored? Here, let me help." Rumi places a +4 card with a shitty grin.
Zoey gasps, "How dare you!!" And draws 4 cards while staring unblinking at Rumi, enraged. "I'll make you regret this, Ryu Rumi."
Rumi returns the challenging stare. "Then you better play the game right, Park Zoey."
"Is it my turn now or…?" Mira quirks one brow while leaning closer to them.
"Go ahead, Mira." Rumi shifts her tone to a gentle one. "Zoey just likes being a brat sometimes."
"And Rumi's a rules lawyer, so don't ever try to cheat or she will catch you."
Mira feels an urge to chuckle while watching the two. The so-called 'bond so strong and tight' Zoey claims they have clearly comes from many rounds of games challenging their relationship, which holds by a thread at certain tense moments. While Zoey likes things fast-paced and to explore loopholes in her advantage, Rumi can take up to three business days before deciding whether or not to play a card, sometimes checking back on the game manual to make sure everything's up to code.
But even among arguments and discussions, there's always a lightness to their tone of voice. They know where to draw the line, when to take a step back, when to let the other take a win because of the accumulated respect towards one another.
They care for each other, that's certain. And in a way, that care trickles down to Mira. They wait for her turn. They pay attention when she speaks. And they don't target her in their +2 and +4 attacks as much as they could—or should.
"Uno." Mira holds a single card after quite a long game. The rest of the bar isn't as rowdy as before since most of its attendees are passed out drunk or have left to party somewhere else, leaving only them at the poorly-lit bar top while the bartender washes some kitchen equipment.
"Zoey, do you have a +4 or +2?" Rumi asks.
"No! She either has a blue or a red card! Can't you change the color?" Zoey answers, while also noting that the top card of the pile is a red 8.
Rumi plays a green 8. "There."
Zoey gives an apologetic look to Mira while placing a green 9. "Sorry, I told you we wouldn't go easy on you."
Mira simply smiles. "You didn't need to." And plays a blue 9, using her now-empty hands to stretch above her head. "That was fun."
Rumi and Zoey exchange surprised looks.
"Good game." Rumi begins tidying up the table to organize the cards.
"Wanna go again?" Zoey's eyes shine.
"I think I'm good, actually." Mira looks back at the table her classmates previously were, but have long left while she was too busy playing. She would be lying if she said one of her initial intentions while approaching Zoey and Rumi wasn't to bring one of them back to her dorm, but she doesn't feel as if her night was badly spent. Quite the contrary—she really enjoyed their company, which is rarely true unless the other person's clothes are off.
Does she still want to sleep with them? Maybe. But, while they were playing, she noticed something that put a stop to her plans.
"Since I won, and you two lost, can I make a dare?" She proposes.
"A dare?" Rumi cocks her head while putting the cards back inside the box.
"Go for it!!" Zoey encourages, feet dangling from the high chair in excitement.
"I dare you two to kiss each other." Mira keeps a monotone voice while carefully observing their reactions.
Rumi's eyes widen and she goes to speak, but her cheeks are suddenly grabbed by Zoey, who squeezes her mouth into a pout before giving her a noisy kiss. Rumi tenses for a moment, but turns into putty in Zoey's hands in no time.
Zoey opens her eyes and looks back at Mira with a smirk. "Try harder next time!" And sticks out her tongue.
Mira hums. "So you two are a couple."
Rumi rubs her face to hide a terrible blush. "Was it obvious?"
"I mean, the rings on your fingers, the matching tattoos on your wrists…And you flirt while arguing. Have you ever noticed that?"
Zoey looks up while thinking. "It's not like we do it on purpose…" Then, her eyes snap back at Mira. "Oh god, is that why people don't play with us? We didn't make you uncomfortable, did we?!"
Mira shakes her head dismissively. "I don't mind. It's cute, actually."
Like a hivemind, both Zoey and Rumi avert their eyes in a nervous hurry.
"Well—" Rumi fails to sound confident. "I had a lot of fun, and I think Zo did too, so…if you want, you could—I mean, we could...I don't know, maybe…"
"Play again sometime?" Zoey finishes for her, with both looking expectantly at Mira with puppy eyes.
Mira waits a moment before answering.
This had been an atypical night for her. While most people happily spend Friday nights immersed in game sessions with friends, Mira couldn't recall a single Friday she hadn't spent in the arms of a stranger since the beginning of University.
She did have fun. If it had just been that—that the game was fun—then she could just say a dismissive 'yeah, sure' and ghost any attempts at another game night.
But it didn't feel like it was just about the game.
Rumi 'accidentally' called Zoey baby quite often while they were playing—sometimes catching herself and blushing, other times not even realizing she'd said it, given how natural it was.
Mira counted eleven times that the word 'baby' was said, but not once was it meant for her.
Zoey liked to lean closer to Rumi and pretend she was trying to see her cards, but Rumi would promptly back away to hide them, which Zoey took as a challenge to tease Rumi as much as she could, including placing a hand on Rumi's thighs while trying to peek.
Not once did Zoey lean in her direction, or ask to see her cards.
They aren't interested in her. Why would they? They are a couple; they have each other. Unlike with most people, Mira didn't have to worry about kicking them out of her life after a one-night stand. She could just…enjoy their company.
What a novelty.
But another thing was true. What Zoey and Rumi had for each other was pure and loving, the total opposite of whatever the fuck she has been doing every Friday night. Playing Uno with them, witnessing their affection first-hand, was a reminder that no matter how many people she slept with, how many hands touched her body in a caring way, nothing compared to what Zoey and Rumi have.
A love that wasn't directed at her, but just by being there, she could feel it.
Something that wasn't meant for her.
That she could never have.
But she wanted it so bad—
No.
The game had been fun.
That was all.
And she wanted to play with them again because she liked games.
Nothing else.
"When are you two free?" She returns the question.
Unlike Rumi, Zoey doesn't try to hide the excessive happiness that colors her face. "Our game nights happen every Friday 8PM at Saja Hall, classroom 102! You should stop by!"
Rumi takes the Uno box and puts it inside the pocket of her jacket. "That's when our club sessions are, even though we're not technically a club—"
"Yet!" Zoey adds, jumping off her chair. "But if you join us, we'll be one step closer!"
"I'll think about it," Mira ponders. Fridays are usually when she goes partying, so she had a week to consider the option. She waves at the bartender. "Abby, put it on my tab, please," referring to the drinks she had while at the previous table and a water that had been accompanying her throughout the game.
"You come here often?" Rumi asks.
Mira quietly sighs, letting the sound of her sneakers carry her out the exit. "Much more than I'd like," And waves them goodbye.
Weekends are when Professor Baek annoys her to grade the homework for the past week. Still an old-fashioned man, he makes all his students deliver homework in pencil and paper, and shoves it all in Mira's lap while he gets to spend his free time with his family.
She buys a six-pack of energy drinks on Saturday morning, and drinks each one accompanied by a meal while going through the paperwork, just to have everything ready by Monday as he requested.
It's excruciating work. Every cross mark she draws while half-asleep makes her regret her decision of taking the job.
But this weekend, as she was grading some papers with heavy-lidded eyes and the taste of RedBull still on her tongue—
Ryu Rumi.
She reads the name on the header of the front page, followed by the name of the professor, the lecture number, and the date of the assignment.
"The Ideological Influences of American liberalism on South Korean Politics post-WWII" —Reads the title.
The language is impeccable. The arguments are flawless. The sources are well-researched. And the lettering? Every line is so perfectly straight, and every circle so perfectly round that Mira almost thought it was a digital print if not for the faint graphite stains at the edges of the paper.
Mira was never one to single out students while grading homework. To her, each one was just a weight on her desk, another twenty minutes she could have spent sleeping instead of having to write "B+", "D-", "Incomplete" over and over and over again.
But for the first time, she pays some special attention. She recognizes how Rumi's way of writing is similar to how she speaks, with both being formal while excessively apologetic. She also notices how one graphite stain is a fingerprint, likely of Rumi's index finger, with many eraser lines striking across it in desperate attempts to remove it.
Mira puts her own finger on top of it—unlike Zoey's hand, Rumi's digit is almost the same size as hers, and stains her index with the smudge of black powder.
The following Monday, Professor Baek delivers back the assignment to the students as if to claim authorship for the grading, while Mira sits in the corner of the class to take lecture notes.
Rumi takes back her paper, smiles at the A+ right next to her name on the top of the front page, and takes a second to read the compliments left by whoever graded it.
Whether she noticed the extra fingerprint on it, Mira's not sure.
Mondays and Wednesdays are when Prof. Baek's lectures take up three hours of her day. On Tuesdays and Thursdays, Mira takes two and a half hours of that time to nap in an undisclosed location in the university library, and uses the extra thirty minutes to go to the mailroom in the same building in the hopes of her package arriving.
"Well, well, well, if it isn't who I think it is!" Zoey has her arms resting on the wooden counter of the room, and behind her are various numbered cardboard boxes—some small, some television-sized—stacked on top of metal shelves or each other. "To what do I owe your presence, m'lady?"
Mira relaxes against the counter, looking around the room to see if she could find anything with her P.O box number. "Did anything arrive for me yet?"
Zoey hums in disapproval. "So you're not here for me? Ouch."
"Oh—"
Zoey chuckles at Mira's apologetic expression. "Relax, I'm just playing with you. But you know what I'm gonna say, right?"
Mira sighs. "Nothing yet?"
Zoey shakes her head. "Nope, sorry. I promise I'll let you know when something arrives for you. Matter of fact…" Zoey impishly grins. "Why don't you give me your number? That way, I can tell you when a package arrives faster than our e-mail system."
Zoey takes her cellphone out of her jeans pocket and slides it to Mira, who doesn't hesitate to take it and create a new contact. She passes the phone back to Zoey, who reads the contact name and laughs. "You want me to call you Mira Mail?"
"That's just so you know who you're talking to."
"You think I know any other Miras? No shot. Even if I did, there's no way I'd mistake you for anyone else. BUT, if you're so afraid about it…"
She adjusts something on her phone, and beckons for Mira to hunch down and closer to her. Unsuspectingly, Mira does so, and Zoey takes the opportunity to glue their cheeks together and take a selfie of her smiling while Mira's too surprised to react.
"There!" She shows her phone to Mira, with the Selfie now being the contact photo while the name has been changed to 'Mimi'. "Now you can relax knowing that I won't forget you."
Mira huffs a laugh. "And that's all so you can let me know when my package arrives?"
Zoey snaps her fingers. "Exactly! So next time you come to the mailroom, you can say you're here for me instead. How about it?"
She looks fondly at Zoey. "Deal. I'll come back on Thursday, same time."
"I'll see you then!" Zoey waves goodbye while she walks away, giving one last smile in Zoey's direction from over her shoulder.
When she gets out of sight of the mailroom, her phone pings.
Zoey sent the selfie they just took.
Mira sighs and heads back to her dorm.
Professor Baek's lecture on Wednesday is as boring as ever, and given that she's not there to learn, but to aid him when needed, his words feel extra pointless. Mira stands at the lectern to pass the PowerPoint slides at his command, which means she's only allowed to move a single click of a mouse after terribly long minutes of his babbling.
Rumi sits in the front row. She also sat there on Monday. Whether she always sits in the front row, Mira's not sure, but given Rumi's "top student" tendencies that would not be out of character for her.
It's uncanny how often she catches Rumi looking in her direction. While all the other students are looking at Professor Baek and the photocopies of written notes he calls his PowerPoint slides, Rumi does a pretty bad job at going along with the crowd. It's almost like she intentionally picked front-row seats to something else entirely.
If Rumi weren't dating Zoey, Mira would have thought Rumi was another fan of hers.
Mira goes to the mailroom on Thursday to see if a package arrived for her Zoey. They hadn't exchanged many messages since Monday besides Zoey doing an interest check on what games Mira would be interested in playing on Friday, but Mira, still on the fence about it, didn't give much thought to her responses.
Mira still asks her usual question, 'Did anything arrive for me yet?' and receives the same-old 'No, sorry.'
She knew it was going to be a no. Zoey promised her she would text if any package with her name arrived, so the lack of such a message was an obvious sign that their conversation would not diverge from the usual script.
But Zoey had also asked her to come anyway to have some small talk, and why not. Unlike Rumi, who communicates with nervous glances and goodbye waves at the end of class, Zoey is much more talkative and tells all about her day. She even asks Mira to help her out by placing boxes on the higher shelves, which Mira effortlessly does. Zoey throws a comment about Mira being very tall, and how much she wants to climb her someday.
If Zoey weren't dating Rumi, Mira would have thought she was getting hit on.
The sunset colors the Friday sky with a bright, orange hue.
Mira stares at herself in the bathroom mirror. Because she shares it with other girls in her apartment-style dorm, other toothbrushes and makeup accessories are lying around the sink counter besides her own. Having recently gotten out of the shower and with a towel wrapped around her torso, she pulls out her contact case from inside her toiletry bag and places it next to her thin, gold-rimmed eyeglasses.
She's presented with a choice.
She always wears her contacts. In class, in the library, while driving, when hanging out at the bar…even unadvisably keeping them on during sex, which always makes her wake up with dry eyes the next morning. The point is to look flawless, regardless of angle.
Problem is, there's a certain point in a day when her eyes become intolerant of the contacts, and a burning sensation grows if she insists on wearing them. Thankfully, she gets to put on her eyeglasses after a shower when she spends the rest of her night at home, but that's not true on Fridays, when she styles her face with makeup and the contacts become a must to up her looks.
If she's going back to the bar tonight, then her next actions involve taking a deep breath and shoving those thin lenses back into her eye sockets.
But…
If she's going to the board game club room with Zoey and Rumi, then perhaps wearing her glasses wouldn't be such a big deal. Actually, eyeglasses fit the "I am a nerd" aesthetic that gaming clubs call for, which would make her blend in with the vibes. Not that Rumi or Zoey wore glasses to match the description, but they were nerdy in their own ways: Rumi being booksmart, Zoey being more of a geek.
She puts on her glasses and looks in the mirror once more.
She's still pretty, emanating a studious vibe that some people have a kink for. She wonders if Rumi or Zoey have this kink, given their hots for each other. She wonders if she has a similar kink, but dismisses the idea because of its pointlessness. She's not considering hanging out with them because she wants nerds for dinner, for fuck's sake. They're just nice people who happen to be smart and hot at the same tim—
Nope, not thinking about this. She keeps the glasses on and walks to her wardrobe to pick a casual outfit for the night. Next Friday she can hit on a random nerd at the library and test out her horny meter, but tonight she's hanging out with this couple who invited her to have some fun.
Playing board games, obviously.
'BoArD GamES ClUB in SeSsiON! CoMe PLAY gAmEs WiTH Us!!!!'
The white sheet taped on the door of classroom 102 says, written in chicken-scratches bleeding through the paper with its bold, dizzying strokes. Plenty of drawings of board game paraphernalia (dice, cards, meeples, and tokens) made with thin, colorful ballpoint pens decorate the corners of the sheet. They're very well-drawn, unlike the text.
Mira catches herself staring at the door and the paper attached to it while standing in the middle of the completely empty hall like a creep. She didn't mean to—she was just talking to herself about how that's certainly not Rumi's handwriting, and screamed 'Zoey' in the most beautiful way.
Her hand sort of moves on its own to trace one of the bold lines, and when she looks at her finger, her fingerprint is stained with its fresh ink. She quickly rubs it off and knocks on the door.
Hurried steps become increasingly audible before the door swings open.
"You came!!" Zoey almost blinds her with the happiness beaming out of her shiny smile. "Please come in! We brought all the board games you said you were interested in, and a lot of snacks too!"
Zoey guides her inside, but there's not much to see. Unlike Prof. Baek's lecture-style classroom, with fixed seats organized in an auditorium setting, this one has a flat floor with moving tables and chairs, usually arranged side-by-side so all students can see the whiteboards and the projection screen. Zoey and Rumi, however, moved everything around to form four big tables, though only one of those was occupied with stacked board games and bowls filled with chips and candy.
"I forgot to ask what you wanted to eat, so we brought a bit of everything." Zoey approaches the unorganized table and sits to grab a handful of M&Ms. "When our club gets approved for funding, we'll get much more food, just you wait."
Zoey's positivity is an anomaly in this 'sad birthday party' scenario. Even Rumi, who's sitting on the opposite side of Zoey with a game opened in front of her its manual in hands, is just silently staring with a blank face.
"…You're wearing glasses." Is the only thing she says after Mira sits down in the end chair.
Mira leans back and crosses her arms, apprehensively looking away. "Why? Is it weird?"
"No!" Rumi accidentally crumples the game manual. She nervously rushes to straighten it. "No, I'm just—surprised. I didn't know you used glasses."
"Most people don't." Mira adjusts the frames on her face. "I usually wear contacts."
"I think what Rumi's trying to say is that you look good either way, Mimi." Zoey smirks, throws an M&M in the air, and catches it in her mouth. "You should wear your glasses more often. You look hot with them."
"Zoey!" Rumi yelps, crushing the manual yet again.
"What?" Zoey shrugs. "It's just the truth." And licks a bunch of M&Ms off her hand.
Mira snorts—she knows they're just joking. "So, what game is this?" She gestures to the board in front of her.
"Ah-" Rumi puts the wrinkled manual on the table and slides it to Mira. "It's Monopoly…?"
Mira frowns while analyzing the setup. "So this is Monopoly…"
Rumi arches an eyebrow. "You never really played it before?"
"Not really, no. I've heard of it before, though."
"Monopoly's like—one of the biggest board games ever. A classic," Zoey comments. "You never played with your family before?"
Mira takes the metallic token in the shape of a race car to see it from up close. "Not really. My parents travel a lot, so quality time is pretty rare."
"Oh." Rumi lets scape, as both she and Zoey look at her, wide-eyed.
"Who stayed with you, then?" Zoey cocks her head, but her tone of voice is much more serious than before.
"Au Pairs," Mira offhandedly answers while fidgeting with the metal token. "Just a fancy name for nannies from overseas. I also had a bird too, but it flew away when I was fourteen, I think." She looks back at Rumi and Zoey, but can't quite comprehend their concerned faces.
"And what did you do for fun…?" Rumi tries to lighten the mood with a less intense question.
Mira shrugs and places the token on the 'GO' space of the Monopoly board. She takes the manual and tries to read it, though the creases no doubt made the task harder. "My schedule was packed with extracurriculars, so not much. I liked my ballet classes, though."
"That's fun!" Zoey nervously chuckles, "And talking about fun, why don't we start playing? There's nothing better than spending time unproductively!"
Rumi takes the lead and starts describing the fundamentals of the game to Mira, who's quick to catch up after a test round. Zoey connects her cellphone to the classroom speakers and puts on K-pop songs while each take their turn, and as the game goes on—
"Why am I going to jail again!?" Zoey dramatically groans.
Rumi moves Zoey's token—the top hat—to the 'Jail' space, snobbishly humming as she does. "Seems like someone hasn't learned her lesson yet."
Zoey accusatorily points a finger at her. "You keep hoarding all the 'Get out of Jail' cards like a dragon!!"
Rumi fans herself with said cards. "And…?"
"AND?" Zoey seethes and slams her fists against the table. "Mira, come bail me out!"
Mira pathetically stares down at the three $20 bills in her stash. "I'm poor, sorry."
"Don't worry Mira, bailing another player is against the rules." Rumi sweetly smiles, but her stare turns wicked when aiming it at Zoey. "You either pay the bank $50 or roll doubles on the dice, baby."
"Fuck the system!" Zoey is yanking at her space buns while grunting. "I'm not paying the bank!!"
"The system's quite nice if you follow it." Rumi smirks and teasingly waves a 'Get out of Jail' card. Zoey growls and lurches forward to catch it, but Rumi is too quick and evades. Their erratic movements make the table shake and all tokens slide off their places, messing up their whole board, but Rumi and Zoey are too caught up in their play fight to notice.
Mira also doesn't notice it. She is too absorbed in watching the two, a quiet smile playing at her lips. And that's all she does: watches like they're her favorite Friday night romcom. Unlike other viewers, she gets the opportunity to join if she wants to. But does she want that? To get in the middle of the special thing Zoey and Rumi have going on, even if that thing manifests in meaningless fights over games?
There's something so special about just watching and allowing yourself to feel, but not touch. Of vicariously consuming someone else's love because you're too afraid that, if it ever becomes yours, it's destined to fly away.
Zoey and Rumi could never become hers, and that's the best thing that ever happened to her.
"Mira!"
"Mira!"
They both scream in her direction, fully tangled up on each other on top of the table. Zoey was a palm away from grabbing the card out of Rumi's hand, but simply couldn't move further under Rumi's hold.
"Yes?" She answers like that's the most natural thing she's ever seen.
"Tell Rumi to give me the damn card!" Zoey begs with pleading eyes hiding fury.
"Tell Zoey to stop being a big baby about this!" Rumi doesn't give in; her soft spot for Zoey never worked during these moments.
Mira takes the food bowls into her lap to avoid them being knocked down while they struggle. She nibbles on the potato chips. "Does that even matter? I'm pretty sure there's nothing left to the game anyway."
And she was right. Zoey and Rumi roughhoused so much that all the cash and cards were scattered everywhere, even on the floor. Organizing everything would simply take too long.
"Oh." Zoey and Rumi rue, finally separating from each other and going back to their respective places.
"Sorry about that." Rumi gawkily apologizes while taking the game pieces off the floor.
"It's alright, I'm pretty sure I lost anyways." Mira shrugs and eats another chip. Her only three $20 bills were somewhere in the mess, but she recalls Zoey and Rumi having much more.
"Monopoly takes too long, so at least we had a conclusion," Zoey chimes in while putting the board back in its box. "But since you lost…"
Mira's a bit confused by the look Zoey shares with Rumi.
"We have a dare for you this time," Zoey smirks.
"It's not a dare." Rumi corrects. "We have a few questions we want to ask, if you don't mind answering."
"And you're legally obligated to answer truthfully, as per the rules of 'Daring.'" Zoey adds.
They finish tidying up the table, and Mira returns the bowls to their places. She can feel them both intensely staring at her.
"Sure," Mira answers, unworried.
"I'll start," Zoey says. "What's your major?"
"International relations."
"What's your career path?" Rumi continues.
"I want to be a diplomat."
"Favorite color?"
"Pink."
"Favorite animal?"
"Birds."
"Favorite snack?"
"Chips are ok."
"Are you seeing anyone?"
"Not really...?"
Zoey and Rumi expectantly await more.
Mira leans on the table, not sharing the same seriousness as the two. "It's really surprising how you don't know this, but I sleep around a lot."
"You sleepwalk?" Rumi puzzles.
"No, Rums. She's saying her body count is high."
"You kill people!?"
"No Rumi! She bangs them."
"You shoot them?!!"
"I have sex with them," Mira tries a more straightforward approach. By Rumi's flinch, it seems like she finally got the message. "With women only. But it's never serious, so I wouldn't say I'm seeing someone."
"So you never dated anybody?" Zoey asks.
"Dating's not my thing."
"Why not?" Rumi interrogates like a cop.
Some words die on her tongue before she gathers something coherent. "I'm better off on my own."
"I see..." Zoey nods, but it's unclear if she agrees. She's quick to put on a smile. "Well, as long as you're happy! Why don't we play another game?" And reaches for the pile of board games.
"Not that one…" Rumi sighs when she sees Zoey grab 'Catan'.
"Why not?" Mira asks.
Not even twenty minutes later, Rumi and Zoey are in an intense argument about Rumi stealing Zoey's only clay after putting the 'Robber' on her most productive tile.
And Mira keeps watching.
Her phone pings twice while she puts the recently bought energy drinks inside the mini fridge of her dorm, leaving only one out for this Saturday morning.
She smiles to herself and sits at her desk, laying the phone down right next to the pile of Prof. Baek's to-be-graded assignments.
Friday night was a blast. They stayed up to 2 AM inside that austere classroom listening to music and eating junk food while playing board games. She had asked whether they were even allowed to stay there for that long, and the plain answer was no.
"The classrooms are usually all locked during the night," Rumi explained. "Except this one."
"We shouldn't be here, period." Zoey agreed. "But we can't have an official club room yet, so we're here in the meantime."
Going from sleeping in other people's beds to illegally occupying campus property didn't seem like a major upgrade, to be honest. In either situation, getting caught by a third-party (a roommate, a professor, a cop…?) would be disastrous. But she had always been careful, and Zoey and Rumi said nobody came to check Saja Hall after 6 PM, so they were free to yell and laugh as much as they wanted.
'We're trespassing' simply isn't a good enough reason to reject Zoey's invite.
She wanted to refuse them. She had strayed from her playbook the moment she agreed to meet them a second time, even if she let it slide because this wasn't about sex. But is it weird to say their game night also felt…intimate?
They didn't cuddle or touch. Rumi and Zoey weren't like those Velcro couples who can't stand a single moment without being on top of each other, though that seemed to be mostly because Rumi was very conscious of her personal space. But they did tease each other a lot while playing, and some of it came in Mira's way this time. Jokingly, of course.
Surprisingly, she didn't feel as if she was intruding in their dynamic. She wasn't third-wheeling. She was just…there. With them. Because they wanted her to. And though they joked around about her being hot and cute, she knew they were just trying to make her feel welcome.
And she did.
Playing board games was nothing like sex, but getting to know this couple felt like stepping over a line she shouldn't cross.
She could just go back to the bar. Drink the night away, wake up with a hangover in another girl's sheets, rinse and repeat for the rest of the semester and her college experience. A part of her craves the buzz of alcohol and the high of an orgasm, but another part…Wants revenge for losing on Monopoly.
What a weird dilemma to be in.
She sighs, cracks a bottle of energy drink open, and grabs the first pile of papers to grade. Wouldn't you know it, Rumi's assignment is the first one on the pile.
The 4B Movement and its Future Political Implications — Reads the title, followed by the most complex, thought-provoking essay she could expect to find in a freshman class. Also…
There's a very tiny note at the bottom.
'If it's you grading, give me a sign'
On Monday morning, Professor Baek returns the graded assignments to the students, and Rumi notices how the little note she left has been erased.
Whether she noticed that the dot on the 'i' of her name at the header is now a heart, Mira's not sure.
On Tuesday, Mira brings a caramel latte to the mailroom, per Zoey's request. Her package hasn't arrived yet, but Zoey asks for her help to reach the higher shelves again, and that's what she does.
On Wednesday, Rumi stops her at the end of class to ask some clarifying questions about that day's lecture. Mira draws on a piece of paper to illustrate some concepts, but Rumi's attention doesn't seem to be on it.
On Thursday, Mira considers asking for a wage, given that she's being pulled to help Zoey with organizing packages again, while Zoey talks her ears off about different types of board games.
"Do you know what a TTRPG is?" Zoey asks while idly spinning in her chair in the mailroom.
"No idea," Mira answers while sorting packages.
"Okay, great! Because tomorrow I'm planning on making a DND one-shot, and I just know you're gonna love it!"
"Never heard of that drink before."
"Drink?"
"You said a shot of DND."
Zoey scrunches her brows before chuckling. "Mimi, you're about to discover something much better than alcohol."
On Friday, Mira puts on her glasses and convinces herself that seeing them a third time wouldn't hurt, because A) They don't want to sleep with her, and B) She really wants to try this new beverage Zoey boasted about. When she arrives at class 102 at Saja Hall, she's given a page full of numbers (Zoey called them 'stats') and an elf miniature she decides to name 'Rosalina'. She and Rumi's demon (Zoey tells her to call it a 'tiefling') embark on a fantasy journey to slay the scary purple fire that had been burning down the houses and stealing people's souls during the dynastic Korean ages.
"If we kill this fire, do we win the game?" Rumi asks while staring at Zoey hiding behind her DM screen.
"You can't win DND, Rumi. That's not how it works." Zoey answers.
"So when does the game end?" Mira looks up from the huge book of rules that Zoey gave her, but she hasn't even reached page ten yet.
"The point is to tell a collaborative story and have fun! It ends when we say it ends." Zoey confidently grins. "Okay Ru, give me animal handling."
Rumi rolls a dice. "It's a 20. Does that hit?"
Zoey giggles. "You're not hitting it, you're trying to befriend it. And that's a critical success, so I guess…the blue tiger nuzzles to your side, recognizing you as its new owner."
"Can I roll to befriend it too?" Mira says, already grabbing some dice.
"Sure! Go for it."
"It's a 2."
"You knock down a flower pot and the tiger growls at you."
"Damn it."
"Mira! Long time no see," Abby says as soon as they lock eyes while he places a cherry inside the drink of a customer. "And on a Thursday, no less. Did you hit your head and spend the past two months in the hospital or something?"
His sarcasm is evident, so she relaxes against the bar top while sitting at her usual stool. "Not really, but would you call me crazy if I said I'm here to pay my tab?"
He scrunches his forehead and huffs a laugh. "Can't believe it. My best customer, finally settling down. And I was so close to paying all my student loans with your money." He gives the finished drink to another customer and grabs a bottle of white rum. "Let me make you something on the house."
Mira rolls her eyes but keeps a smile on her face. "I'm not settling down. I'm just busy with something else."
"Not someone else?" He teases.
"Not in the way you're thinking. I've joined this board games club—well, we're not a club yet—"
"Who's we?" He interrupts as he pours ice into a glass.
Mira puts her elbows on the table and drops her head into her hand. She hides a smile with her fingers. "Not sure if you recall, but the last time I was here these two girls sitting at the counter; one with purple hair in a braid, a smaller one with space buns."
He frowns, rummaging his memory. Then, he sighs, as if the act of thinking is just too stressful for him. "Can't remember, sorry. Too many people come and go in here." And he hands her the finished Mojito.
"Thanks." She takes a sip; oh, how much she's missed this refreshing taste. "Well, I meet them every Friday to play board games, or card games, or TTRPGs," She pronounces it slowly, still struggling. "So I'm not really sure why we call it a 'board games club', but it's what it's called. Or will be called. Tomorrow we're throwing a party to see if we get new members, so we'll see if the name remains the same after more people join."
"So you've fully become a nerd, huh?" He chuckles and begins preparing other drinks. "Especially with those glasses."
She reflexively adjusts the golden frames on her face and takes another sip. "Not as much as Zoey and Rumi."
"Zoey and Rumi, huh?" He arches an eyebrow. "Which one of them is it?"
She frowns.
"Which one of them are you hunting this time?"
She feels a pain in her chest disorient her for a moment. "They're a couple, Abby." She growls.
"Oh! So both of them?"
"No!" Her shoulders rise, her palms full splayed against the table. "What type of sex demon do you think I am?!"
"You've slept with every girl that ever entered this place," He briefly pauses to rattle a cocktail shaker. "It just makes sense that the next step is to go for doubles."
She sighs and rolls her eyes. "You know that's not how relationships work, right?"
He snorts, "Maybe not closed relationships, but you'd be surprised at how many times I've seen couples approach someone single and be like 'hey, me and my partner saw you from across the room and we really like your vibe.'" Abby deepens his voice for dramatic purposes. He takes a pause, and Mira can see his gears turning from the amount of smoke coming out of his ears. "You said you met them here, right?"
She drinks more of the Mojito and ruminates on the mint leaves. "Right."
"Ah, now it makes sense! "He pours another drink and delivers it to one of the servers. Then, he approaches Mira with a smirk. "You didn't go after them; they went after you."
"What!?"
"Oh yeah," Abby crosses his arms and enthusiastically nods. "Oh, that's absolutely what happened. Can't believe you finally got a package deal. How does it feel not to be the hunter, but the huntee, huh?"
She takes a credit card out of her pocket and slams it on the counter. "Stop with the nonsense and just give me my tab."
He keeps his smug expression even while Mira berates him with her bare eyes. "So you're in denial, huh? That's a first." He takes the card and goes to the register, which is not so far away. "I've honestly never seen two people go to a bar to recruit someone for their board games club, unless that's a metaphor for something else."
She takes a sharp breath and drinks the rest of her Mojito in one go. The way she slams the glass against the table after finishing it has Abby almost adding a broken cup to her tab. "You're making my last day here really unpleasant, just so you know."
"Ha, sorry. It's just not always that I get to see you this." He points at the obvious snarl in her face. "Like I said, I've seen you with a lot of girls before, but none of them ever affected you this much. I mean, who cares if they like you?"
"They don't like me." She raises her voice and narrows her eyes.
"Fine." He sighs and gives the card back. "They don't. But what if they did?"
She freezes.
Her breath stills.
She shakes her head in small, stiff movements. "That—
That's just impossible."
He approaches her slowly, realizing something wrong behind those eyes. "Mira, are you okay?"
She snaps back to reality, flinches at Abby's presence, and practically stumbles off the barstool, running towards the exit while disregarding Abby calling out her name.
For the past two months, Rumi left her tiny notes written in pencil at the bottom of all her weekly assignments.
'I finished this one hour before the
deadline, please go easy on me.'
Mira did her best to intercept Rumi's assignments, which wasn't hard, given that Professor Baek was more than happy to put the homework on her shoulders. Rumi always gets her graded homework with the note erased, but another one on top of it.
'I can barely tell.
You did amazing as always.'
'What did you think of my first
paragraph? I'm really proud of it.'
'Hook, line, and sinker.
So entertaining to read.'
'I hate that he makes us write citations
by hand. Can you do something about it?'
'You want me to change the
mind of that old fart? Hah.'
'I think you can do anything
you put your mind to, Mira.'
'I beg to differ.'
Besides that, Rumi oftentimes stopped her after class to ask for clarification on some topics, which ended in recurring thirty-minute private tutoring sessions between the two. Rumi was more of a listener than a talker, but she was very engaged in Mira's explanations and made comments that showed more than just basic understanding of topics. Mira wondered if Rumi even needed those private lessons or those reassuring comments in her assignments.
Rumi's very smart. She never needed either.
For the past 2 months, Mira would be on standby for Zoey's messages in the hopes of one day finally getting the one she wanted. But in the meantime…
Zoey <3
Yo! Guess what I got in
the mailroom today?
My package?
Zoey <3
No… 
It's a package from someone
named Jan Mulders
I don't know this person
Zoey <3
Yeah, I didn't think you would
But here's a fun fact for you
Whenever we get a package
from this Jan Mulders guy,
there's a dildo inside
Really?
Do you open every
package to check?
Zoey <3
Nope!!
Then how do you know?
Zoey <3
...
Don't worry about it.
Just come to the mailroom on
Tuesday and help me put this
package on the top shelves,
alright, handsome?
They haven't given
you a ladder yet?
Zoey <3
No 😇
And to the mailroom she went, every Tuesday and Thursday, to help Zoey out with sorting packages and placing them where Zoey couldn't reach. On busy days at the mailroom, she'd bring Zoey a caramel latte to boost her energy. On slow days, she'd come anyway, because Zoey said her help was always needed, with or without coffee. Mira wondered how Zoey managed things in the mailroom before she arrived, given how much Zoey needed her.
Zoey's self-sufficient. There had always been a ladder.
For the past two months, they played board games together.
Rumi and Zoey had an extensive collection of games, which only seemed to grow as they played. Sometimes they'd bring a game with a box at its last drop of life, with the name barely legible, and who knows how many cards and tokens had gone missing. Other times, they'd bring a game with the price tag still on and shining with the plastic wrapping intact, and those were given straight to Mira to be opened.
The games were meant for the club, but they made it seem like they bought it just for her.
Zoey and Rumi always ended up arguing about something stupid in the game: the homebrew Zoey saw on the internet, Rumi claiming rules are 'not up to interpretation', Zoey taking advantage of loopholes, Rumi using the etymology of words to rule in her favor….And Mira was the judge of it all, tasked with deciding who won the argument. She didn't like taking sides, so she would mostly choose depending on who she wanted to make a dare for that day. Because yeah, as the judge, she also got to decide the punishments for the loser.
"Rumi, for the next game, you have to sit on Zoey's lap."
"Zoey, you have to hand-feed Rumi grapes."
"Ru, you have to give Zoey a hickey."
"Zo, you have to bite Rumi somewhere underneath her clothes."
She toyed with them however she pleased, and they obeyed without much thought. Whatever she said, goes. She got drunk with that power, becoming even more competitive at every game, hoping to make one of them lose so she'd get to make them do something to each other.
She liked how Rumi rapidly flushed under Zoey's touch, and looked straight at her with pleading eyes—
as if wondering if (or when) she'd join them.
She liked how Zoey was conniving in her dares, using the opportunity given to entice Rumi further—
and look at Mira with similar hunger.
Mira watched them.
That was the whole point. To watch, not touch. To feel in her heart, not in her hands. They were beyond her limits, beyond the line she etched for herself. Something she could never have.
And whenever she was the loser, the dares they gave her were just…simple questions.
"What do you think of polyamory?"
"What type of flowers do you prefer?"
"A place you'd like to go on a date?"
"Are you free next Sunday?"
She rejected their attempts at hanging out during the weekend, alleging her duties as a teaching assistant, and never questioned the look of deep disappointment they'd give after her no's. She never thought much about it. It was normal for friends to want to get to know each other better and to hang out more often.
Or at least, that's what she told herself.
That they just wanted to get to know her better.
That their invites weren't 'dates'.
That Rumi wasn't smart.
That Zoey wasn't self-sufficient.
That their questions weren't romantic.
That she just wanted to watch.
She stumbles out of Abby's bar while he calls out her name. She takes off through the dark streets, eyes darting around searching for something to steal her attention. A car, a stop sign, the stars in the sky, the drunk punks at the curb, anything that could stop her from reaching the inevitable conclusion that…
….They love her.
And worst of all….
She loves them too.
Friday night. The very next day.
Zoey's on top of a chair hanging a 'Welcome!' banner on the whiteboard of classroom 102 while Rumi's making sure all of the four tables have equally distributed amounts of candy and chips for all the attendees.
Rumi stares at the snack bowls contemplatively. "Do you think we might have overdone it?"
Zoey finishes the knot, tying the banner to the top corner of the whiteboard. "Nah, I think it's perfect!"
The sign at the door was upgraded to a poster made in Canva, with a big, bold 'Board Games Club in Session! Come play games with us!' written at the center, and various professionally made graphics of board games paraphernalia adorned the sides. The floor of the classroom is full of confetti leading to each of the big tables, where, beside the bowls filled to the brim with food and the addition of assorted bottles of soda, lie the piles of board games to be picked by whoever sits at each station. Zoey's phone is connected to the classroom speakers and is blasting party music, and both of them are wearing cone-shaped party hats.
There's another party hat waiting at the lectern, with its future owner nowhere to be seen.
"Is Mira going to arrive soon?" Rumi asks.
Zoey pulls out her phone, noticing it's almost 8 PM. "I messaged her this morning, but she didn't say anything."
Rumi thumps her foot and crosses her arms. "Do you think something happened? Maybe we should cancel the party?"
Zoey stops at her side. She's capable of looking at Rumi with a smile, hiding her nervousness much better. "Maybe she's just saving energy for tonight. Today's the day we get new members, after all."
For the past two months, Zoey, Rumi, and Mira planned how they would get the other two people needed in order to apply to be an official club at Hon University. Zoey and Rumi had tried putting pamphlets around campus before, but of those that showed up, no one came a second time.
It was Mira's idea to promote the club with a party. 'People need to think this club is cool, and a party is perfect for an image change'—she said. Mira offered to use her networks to bring more attendees. Unlike Zoey and Rumi, two freshmen too caught up in their own hobbies to properly socialize, Mira had an extensive web of connections due to her aspirations of becoming a diplomat, as well as people indirectly knowing her because of her previous Friday night routine.
It's 8:10 PM when the first guest of the club arrives.
"Hey, what's up?" The frat guy confidently walks inside the classroom, not hiding his disappointment at seeing the empty space.
"Oh, hi! You're the first one here!" Zoey walks up to him, and Rumi cordially follows.
"Hey, ah—"
"Zoey." Zoey extends a hand, and he shakes it.
"Rumi." Rumi does the same.
"Is Mira gonna be here soon?"
Zoey and Rumi exchange glances.
"Yes, she will." Rumi confidently speaks. "And more people will show up too. But you're free to eat some snacks in the meantime."
"And we can play a game!" Zoey offers, approaching one of the tables. "Whichever one you want! Rumi and I are pros, and we won't go easy on you."
He doesn't seem too keen on spending time eating chips and playing games. His impatient attitude seems as if the whole point of his presence is something else entirely.
And he's not the only one.
People arrive slowly. Some alone, some in groups, all dressed in what you'd expect at a college party: a guy in a Letterman jacket, a girl in an oversized hoodie, a senior wearing pajamas, a freshman in her best party dress….not to say that there is a uniform to a Board Games Club, but these people didn't come to Saja Hall to become its members, no. At Mira's call, they came to party.
"Yo, put on some better music!" A guy is already hijacking the Bluetooth speakers to up the volume and play his own remixes.
"Where's the alcohol?" Another one asks. He takes a bottle of soda and shakes it, laughing hysterically as he does. "Incoming!" He readies the bottle to spray the crowd, but Rumi quickly stops him by grabbing it from his hands.
"No messing up the classroom!" She yells.
"I didn't know this class stayed open after hours." The breath of this girl comes out in swirls after she takes a puff of vape. She passes it to another like a microphone.
"We should come here more often." The other girl comments, words in similar smoke.
"Oh, you're more than welcome to!" Zoey tries her best to be nice, even though she's sweating about the smoke alarm. "If you're interested in joining the board games club—"
"No, sorry honey. We didn't mean it like that." One condescendingly says. "We mean to vape. This space is pretty nice."
"Yeah," The other guest looks around, analyzing the room. "You said you only use it on Friday nights?"
Zoey hesitantly nods. "Yes, but this is still a classroom. You shouldn't smoke in here—"
"Yo, you guys! Check out this little tiger!" Another person dug into Zoey's DnD bags and grabbed one of the miniatures. "This bag's full of toys."
A group of people walks in the direction of the bags and starts pulling out the minis while laughing.
Zoey gasps, eyes going wide. "No, these are not toys! Please be careful with them!!" She rushes in their direction, trying to salvage the most fragile minis from reckless hands.
Rumi looks around.
People are dancing, smoking, singing, drawing obscenities on the whiteboard, making out at the corners, loudly calling their friends on the phone, and someone's pulling out a bottle of vodka from their own backpack.
"Rumi!" Zoey approaches, clutching her bag with her DnD things inside. "What do we do?!"
Rumi takes Zoey's hand and walks out of the room, stopping in the hallway. Typically, the place would be completely empty, but there's a constant influx of people arriving as the news of a party at Saja Hall spreads.
Things are derailing fast, and they have no idea how to fix it.
But there's someone out there who might know how take control of things.
"Zoey, all of these people are friends with Mira, right? Can you call her?!" Rumi stresses the urgency in her voice, and Zoey's already pulling out her phone before she even finishes the sentence.
They nervously await Mira to pick up the call. She hasn't answered any of Zoey's messages since last afternoon, and was nowhere to be seen all day either. The phone rings and rings.
The call goes to voicemail, but Zoey doesn't give up. She puts the bag of minis on her shoulder and gives the phone to Rumi this time, maybe she'd be luckier. The phone rings and rings…then stops.
Rumi looks at the phone screen to see Mira's contact with the words Declined Call underneath it. As her and Zoey's hopes start to fade…
"I'm here."
A familiar voice approaches them.
A very, very tired voice.
Mira is still taller than them, but her back is slightly hunched forward as if struggling to hold her full weight. She wears normal clothes, just some blue jeans and a white button-up shirt, but the creases show the lack of care of its wearer. She tried to hide eyebags with concealer, but the makeup on her face seemed carelessly done. But she is wearing her contacts.
Zoey and Rumi take a moment to absorb her appearance. It's still Mira. Talks like Mira, walks like Mira, looks like Mira. But why does she look so….uncanny? They can't quite put their hands on what's changed, but that's not the focus now.
"Mira, we were worried about you!" Zoey closes the distance between them and opens her arms for a hug.
Mira stands still, watching.
Zoey keeps her hands to herself. "C-can you help us? Your friends are making a mess in the club room."
Mira slowly looks towards class 102, where music's blasting and there's people yelling. She ambles inside, immediately getting the attention of those closer to the door.
"Mira! How's it going?"
"Mira! We were waiting for you!"
"Mira, this party's lit!!"
People start to agglomerate around her, as if the star of the show has finally arrived.
Zoey and Rumi know from what Mira had told them that she's well-known around Uni—a campus celebrity. But they've never seen her influence in practice before. Never knew she had this much power. To them, she's always been Professor Baek's assistant, the girl waiting for a package, or their third player at the Board Games Club. But tonight…she's someone else entirely.
"Guys," Mira speaks, and the volume of the music dims so everyone can hear her voice. "I get that you want to party, but this is still for the board games club, so could we all agree on playing a game?"
Unsatisfied murmurs are passed around. One person speaks up. "Why tho? Board games are so boring."
Agreements all around, the crowd reaches a unanimous decision to keep things as they are. But before the chaos returns…
"I never said we should play a board game," Mira says.
She spares Rumi and Zoey one last glance. It's discrete, but they feel it.
It's like a resignation.
"Let's play spin the bottle." She says, and the crowd cheers her suggestion.
The wheeled tables are dragged towards the walls to make space for the circle of people at the center of the room. Those who do not wish to play remove the board games from the top of the tables to sit on them instead, crowding the 4 edges of the room like stadium bleachers. An empty plastic bottle is placed at the epicenter of the forming circle.
Rumi observes all the changes happening in mere seconds. She could never do what Mira did and command a crowd this fast. Rumi follows the rules, not makes them.
Zoey's disappointed about the room they've spent so long tidying and organizing being deformed so quickly and cruelly. But that's the way Mira found to fix the mess she couldn't control. Zoey creates chaos, not ends it.
They stand beside Mira, who watches the circle be made like a major general.
Zoey takes a breath of relief. "At least things are under control now. Thanks Mira."
Rumi fondly smiles. "Thank you, Mira."
They get no reaction out of her.
She takes a step forward.
Then another.
Then another.
Then another.
Then…
Sits down within the circle, and the people beside her clasp her back to celebrate.
"What…" Zoey's eyes go wide.
"You guys," one guest yells. "Mira's gonna play!"
Everybody in here knows her. Everyone cheers, even more excited about this Spin the Bottle game. Some people even rush to the circle given the new player.
Rumi's the only one brave enough to go after Mira, standing still behind her. "What are you doing!?" The pain in her voice is evident.
Mira doesn't look. "I'm gonna play."
"Mira…" Zoey goes to Rumi's side. She takes Rumi's hand so maybe hers could stop shaking. "Can you please not? We…Rumi and I are a couple, so we can't play, but you—"
"I'm single." She's curt, razor-sharp. She looks at them from over her shoulder, but regrets it immediately. She returns to look at the circle of people, trying to forget the disappointment in Zoey and Rumi's faces.
"You can't be serious!" Rumi shouts. Her voice still drowns in the cacophony of the crowd. "Did nothing of these past months mean anything to you?!"
Mira doesn't move, her voice monotone. "I don't know what you mean."
Rumi snarls and huffs, ready to knock some sense into Mira's head with her bare fists if need be. But she feels a tight squeeze in her hand, and hears a sniffle.
"I'm not watching this." Zoey's cleaning the tears in her eyes. She releases Rumi's hand and bolts towards the door to exit the classroom.
Rumi readies to follow and takes a step forward to go after Zoey. But she gives Mira one last glance. Maybe she heard the sniffle. Maybe she has a weak spot for Zoey, just like she does. Maybe Mira doesn't care about Rumi's complaints, but perhaps Zoey's would…
Mira just watches.
Waiting.
Waiting for Rumi to leave, too.
And when the bottle at the center of the circle gives its first spin, that's what Rumi does.
Mira knew this would happen. That's how it always happens with whatever she loves. It flies away, just like her bird, her au pairs, her parents. She's just…expediting the process this time.
Leaving her is inevitable. Why drag things out for longer than they should?
It was good while it lasted. They had great memories together. Her life taught her to be grateful for those moments, products of the past, ephemeral things. She could never hold onto anything for too long, so at least she could smile about the fact that it happened.
Something inside her definitely smiles. Laughs, even.
You really thought things would be different when you're still the same? Pathetic.
She knew she was committing a mistake the moment she agreed to meet them a second time. And then a third. And then a fourth. She had her playbook for a reason.
One-night only.
Never with the same person.
Never catching feelings.
She managed to break all of her rules, so the pain in her heart is merely the consequence of her own actions.
Falling in love with a couple? Really?
They love her, but for how long? How long until they realize that she doesn't deserve to be loved by a single person, much less two?
That's why every Friday she met with a different girl. They never had the time to properly get to know each other, to create a bond. She could pretend she was loved without the need for intimacy. And the next morning, she cut any hopes they ever had of having a second date. She was the one in control of when they'd leave her life. That way, she'd never be unprepared for a heartbreak ever again.
"Mira!" The girl beside her nudges her shoulder. "It's your turn!"
She looks at the center of the circle, and there it is: the cap of the bottle pointing right at her, while the person who spun it is already crawling in her direction. It's a girl, thankfully.
"Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" Chants start to erupt as the girl gets closer.
Mira's too numb to move, but she doesn't need to. The girl's already in front of her, slightly blushing at the opportunity she's awarded. She gets to kiss The Mira, what a dream.
Mira's kissed plenty of girls before. She's done this a hundred times already. She knows how it goes, knows how to make it feel nice. The other girl closes her eyes, she closes hers, she slightly tilts her head to the side until she feels the other person's lips. She can hear people cheering when their mouths meet, but the sounds are as brief as the contact. She backs away before the girl ever considers using her tongue.
Something doesn't feel right.
It's her turn to spin the bottle, and she makes no ceremony of it. She crawls to the center of the circle, spins it, it goes round and round and round and round…
Lands on another girl.
The chants rise again. "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!"
She winks at Mira, and realizing the hesitation, stands up, walks in Mira's direction, and hunches down in front of her. "What's taking you so long, princess?"
"Nothing." Mira can feel her face contort into one of disgust at the pet name, but she still lurches forward and kisses her.
It tastes horrible.
The girl tries to grab her neck to deepen the kiss, but Mira swats her hand off and backs away. The girl feels offended, but moves on to spin the bottle.
There's something wrong.
The game keeps going, the bottle keeps spinning, but Mira can't keep up. She should be enjoying this. She used to enjoy casual flings, brief kisses, the lack of commitment. This game is the perfect opportunity to return to her old life of never taking anything seriously.
And yet, why can't she kiss any of these girls without wishing they were someone else?
"Mira, it's you again!"
The bottle points in her direction, and this time, a guy is approaching her. She recognizes him. It's that guy who hit on her two months ago, at Abby's bar. Or at least tried to, before being stopped by Zoey and Rumi.
"C'mon Mira, it's just a little kiss." He teases in reaction to her disgusted face. "I'm not even asking for much."
The whole room chants "Kiss! Kiss! Kiss! Kiss!" And it gets increasingly louder as he slowly approaches her face.
Maybe…
That's what's wrong with her.
Maybe…
She just doesn't like being with girls anymore.
Maybe…
This will fix her.
She closes her eyes. Balls her fists. Smells his hot beer breath burning her nostrils. Braces for impact.
Slaps him in the face.
The crowd goes dead silent.
Before anybody can make a comment, she stands and rushes out of the room, panicking.
She doesn't let anybody follow her, and it's not like anyone tries.
She barges out of Saja Hall, but halts outside of it when a strobe of light almost blinds her. When her eyes adapt, she realizes the light blinks red and blue, coming from a recently parked campus police car. Two policemen walking up to the building spot her, but she runs away in the opposite direction. They don't follow her. She watches from afar as they enter Saja Hall, and she can only guess what's about to happen.
Rumors say that campus police got an anonymous tip about a party being out of control at Saja Hall, and all of its participants were put on probation. They allege the party was organized by the Board Games Club, but no such thing exists in the University's official student organizations, so the excuse falls short. On Saturday morning, Mira's brought in for questioning, as many students said she was the one to invite them, and the fact that police saw her leave the building in a hurry wasn't much help either.
She pays ₩400k fine for damages, cleanup, and trespassing campus grounds, as well as getting fired from her job as Prof. Baek's teaching assistant for not fitting academic standards.
After being let go by campus police, she insists on stopping by Saja Hall to see what had come of it. She doesn't get very far, as the doors of the building are locked, and will most likely remain that way every night from now on.
And just like that, Zoey and Rumi's dream of establishing the board games club is destroyed.
Mira spends the rest of the weekend in bed. She can't recall the last time she didn't use her Saturday and Sunday for grading assignments. She tries to see the positive side of the situation: look at how much free time she has now. Maybe she can finally accept Rumi and Zoey's invitations to hanging out during the weekend—
Hah, good joke.
Things are over between them. The Board Games Club ended before it even started. They'd never want to see her again after the mess she made.
This was inevitable, after all. Her relationships never last long. At least she got the opportunity to show Zoey and Rumi that she wasn't the type of player who plays board games. She plays with people's feelings, including her own. A player in the worst sense of the word.
The only thing left to do would be to return to her old self—to a mediocre life, but a safe one nevertheless. She could still go back to Abby's bar, find some random girls, follow her playbook again….
Except that wouldn't work either. Her face contorts from the lingering sense of having kissed those women at yesterday's party, as if her body has become averse to their touches.
She doesn't want to go back to being who she was, wasting Friday night away at someone else's bed. But it's not like she can be in the arms of the people she really wants.
At least Zoey and Rumi have each other. At least they get to go back to their old lives and pretend Mira was just a fever dream.
She's been in bed since morning, rotting away. The contact lenses burn in her dry eyes, but the sensation wanes as she begins to tear up. The sun is setting when she falls asleep.
On Monday, when Professor Baek grumpily returns the assignments to his students after having graded them himself, he inquires Rumi about the weird little note he found at the bottom of her essay.
'Thank you for helping us organize Friday night.
Our club wouldn't be the same without you.'
She blushes and tells him it was a mistake, and that she didn't mean to write it there. He doesn't ask further questions, but tells her to not leave romantic notes to her professors, or he'd be in a lot of trouble.
She simply nods.
On Tuesday, Zoey's in the mailroom organizing a bunch of packages that arrived that morning. There are piles of cardboard boxes the same size as her, if not taller, waiting to be placed in their proper shelves.
She organizes the bottom shelves fairly quickly, but for some reason leaves the packages meant for the higher shelves for last.
When she realizes no one's coming, she takes a ladder hidden behind a desk, cleans the dust off with a wet rag, and finishes tidying up the room by herself.
On Wednesday, Rumi's unable to focus on Professor Baek's words as he gives that day's lecture. Recent events have made it hard to focus on her studies, something she had never struggled with before.
She doesn't raise her hand, opting for jotting down her questions to ask them directly to Professor Baek. As soon as class ends, she stands up and tries to approach him, but a line of distraught students quickly forms, and Baek says those with questions can either wait for their turn or send him an e-mail afterwards.
When the waiting time hits the fifteen-minute mark, Rumi gives up and decides to leave, sighing. She realizes she's gotten so used to Mira's private tutoring that she forgot what it was like to have no one to count on but yourself.
On Thursday, it's a slow day in the mailroom. Zoey's slumped down on the counter and hasn't moved in a while. The last student asking for their package had come by half an hour ago, and didn't bite her attempt at small talk. Zoey's never been a fan of silence, but sometimes, that's what working in the mailroom meant.
Her eyelids are lowering down like rusted curtains—slowly, but surely. She'll eventually fall asleep at this point. It's okay, Mira will wake her up with a caramel latte, so…
Oh. Right. She's not coming. Not for her, at least.
Zoey quietly sighs. She realizes she's gotten so used to Mira's company during her work hours that she forgot what it was like to be alone with her thoughts.
On Friday, nothing happens.
Club's over.
It's a Thursday like any other when Mira's napping in the library after class. Final exams are approaching, the place is busier than usual. She should be studying like everybody else, but her notebook is soft like a pillow, and the words on the paper sing like lullabies. The only thing stopping her from falling asleep is the uncomfortable sitting position she's in, bent like a stapler to accommodate her long arms and legs on top of and underneath the table. She can feel the tiredness slowly taking over, dragging her consciousness away with little to no effort. Just fifteen minutes, she makes a deal with her drowsiness.
"zzzz….."
"…zzzzz…"
"……zzzzz."
Fifteen minutes later, her phone vibrates on the desk.
She flutters her sticky eyes open, absolutely hating the sensation of being woken up.
Just five more minutes…
She grabs her cellphone to snooze the alarm.
Except…
She never set an alarm.
The screen greets her with a message.
Zoey has her arms crossed on top of the mailroom counter, as she usually does. She's talking to Rumi, who stands on the other side as if she's asking for her mail, but that's probably not why she's here. Mira's watching them from afar; their conversation doesn't reach her ears, but she can make an educated guess about the topic.
As she gets closer to them, nervously clutching the straps of her backpack on her shoulders, Zoey's the first one to spot her. Zoey stops speaking mid-sentence and stares, as if she's looking at a ghost. Her silence and faraway gaze are sufficient to make Rumi turn to look in Mira's direction and stand still in similar fashion.
It's even harder to approach, now that they're both looking at her. Mira's heart thumps louder; she hesitates every step. She keeps her eyes on the ground—it's too difficult to look back at them. When the light from the inside of the mailroom finally hits her, that's when she looks up.
They haven't changed one bit since she last saw them a month ago.
Rumi still wears her purple hair in a braid, cascading down her hoodie with a turtleneck underneath. Zoey also wears a hoodie—one of Rumi's hoodies, Mira learned—with the sleeves rolled up to her forearms. Their matching rings are further proof that Mira's absence affected nothing in their dynamic. She sighs in relief.
"Hi," Rumi says.
"Hey," Zoey continues.
"Hi," Mira finishes.
She keeps avoiding their eyes. They keep watching her.
Zoey makes the first move to break the awkward silence. She brings a cardboard box to the counter about the length of a laptop, though much thicker. It has Mira's name on the shipping label, the sender's address is somewhere in Brussels, Belgium, and a date stamp saying it was sent almost four months ago.
Mira's eyes twinkle at the first sight of it, as if she's marveled by its presence. She slowly moves to take it in her hands and feel its weight. Not so heavy, not so light.
"You need to sign here."
She snaps to look at Zoey holding a screen with a digital pen attached to it. She gets a glimpse of Zoey's face, which takes her by surprise.
Zoey doesn't look disappointed or angry, as Mira thought she would. She looks…sad. Like she's mourning something,
Mira takes the pen and signs her name, but spares a glance to see if Rumi's any different.
No. She's also grieving.
Why…do they look so pitiful? They should have moved on at this point. Why are they looking at her like she's someone they miss?
"Can we ask…" Rumi's voice vacillates. "…What's inside?"
Zoey's eyes glimmer in curiosity, a much better expression than the sadness from before. Mira prefers seeing her this way.
She takes a deep breath, holding the box gently in her arms.
"I don't know what's inside, but I know it's from my parents. I told you before that they travel a lot, and they usually get me gifts from their trips. When I was little, they'd leave for two, three months on diplomatic missions, and then come back home with bags full of toys from abroad." The smile is faint on her lips. "As I grew, they came home less and less, and relied more on au pairs to take care of me. Instead of coming home, they just send gifts from their travels through the mail, but they don't bother as much these days." She touches the box reverently. "This is the second one they sent this year."
She said too much; she's not one to overshare. But being back in Rumi and Zoey's presence, she feels as if she can say anything and they'll listen—just like they're doing now.
She missed how safe they make her feel.
"I'm sorry for what I did."
The words come out on their own.
"I'm not used to people staying in my life."
And so do the tears.
"The people I love the most usually fly away,"
She's holding the box so closely.
"And I still don't know why."
Rumi draws her attention by taking a step closer. She tilts her head to the side just slightly, as she usually does when she's trying to understand. "You pushed us away before we could leave you?"
Mira huffs a laugh as she uses her wrist to clean her tears. "I know it's stupid—"
"It's not stupid." Zoey cuts her off. She jumps on the counter to sit on it, for the first time in her life being an inch taller than Mira. "It's how you feel, so we're gonna take you seriously."
Mira nods and sniffles; she's hugging the package now. "I hate when people leave me. I always hated when my parents left to go work abroad, and when the au pairs went back to their countries, and when my bird flew out of the window, and when I wake up alone in bed after having sex with someone. I hate it. I don't know why it keeps happening to me, but it does. So if I can't stop it, at least I can control it." She affirms.
Zoey places a hand on her shoulder, speaking softly. "We'd never do that, Mira."
"I know!" She yells. "I know you wouldn't! You two are so kind and gentle, I know you'd never leave me! But that's what scares me more." She hiccups mid-sobbing. "That someday I'm gonna disappoint you so bad that you're just gonna turn away and leave, just like everybody else. Just like I did at the party."
Rumi rests a hand on her other shoulder, and she's looking at her oh, so gently. "Mira, we didn't leave you because we were disappointed with you. We left because we thought you didn't want to be with us anymore."
"I'm sorry, Mimi. We shouldn't have left." Zoey says with her head down. "But to be fair, I left because I didn't want to see you kissing other people."
Rumi sighs, avoiding her eyes. "Yeah, and sorry for calling the police, too. I was too jealous that night to think straight."
"You," Mira frowns, trying to make sense of the situation. "You were the one to call the police?"
"I didn't think they'd fire you!" Rumi explains. "I thought they were just going to kick everybody out and we'd have the classroom back!"
"To be fair, they confiscated all of our board games," Zoey comments. "And going to get them back would be an admission of guilt, so….we also had our losses."
"Mira, can we show you something?" Rumi says as she removes her hand from Mira's shoulder.
Rumi pulls the sleeve of her hoodie up, showing her wrist tattoo. It simply says 'P2' in black ink. Zoey also takes the opportunity to show hers, which says 'P1' in the same spot.
Mira has seen their tattoos before, on the first night that they met and ever since. She squints her eyes and tries to analyze if something changed, but the tattoos are the same.
"Zoey and I have been dating for two years."
Mira furrows her brows. "You're kidding."
"It's true!" Zoey nods, smiling. "We've known each other since the first year of high school, but Rumi asked me out during homecoming of our junior year, so it hasn't been that long."
"And we got these tattoos the day we both got accepted at Hon Uni." Rumi fondly brushes the text on her wrist.
"My idea, of course." Zoey smiles proudly. "Since most of our relationship developed during the board games club, I thought tattooing Player 1 and Player 2 would be very cute. We decided to abbreviate it, though."
Rumi grins at Zoey and goes to lean on the counter next to her. "I grew up in a very strict household, so the idea of getting a tattoo was insane to me at first. Putting something on my body forever was just unimaginable to me. My aunt Celine almost kicked me out when she saw what I did." She giggles. "But every time I look at my tattoo, I think of Zo. There's a piece of her in me even when she's away, and I know she has a piece of me too to keep her company. That way, it's like we're still together even when we're apart."
"My mom's pretty okay with tattoos, and she even let me get a piercing!" Zoey points at the metal crossing her eyebrow. "The only thing she asked me before I did it was if I was sure I wanted to have a tattoo with someone I just started dating, and honestly? That was the strongest 'yes' I ever said. I know Rums and I are in for the long term. We fight a lot while playing games, but if Rumi and I ever fought for real, I feel like we'd just cuddle while being mad at each other. There's nothing in this world that would break what we have, and our tattoos represent that."
"I know it hasn't been that long since we met, Mira," Rumi says, looking straight at her with the gentlest smile on her face. "But I feel like I've known you since forever. My life hasn't been the same without you. I miss writing notes for you in my essays, and listening to you while you explain political theory to me."
"Yeah, and you're so mean for leaving me to tidy up the mailroom all by myself!" Zoey sulks, faking anger. "Even if you didn't want to help me out, just showing up here would've been enough. I miss having somebody to talk to while I work."
Mira still can't believe what she's hearing. She spent the past month thinking of them every day, but they were also thinking of her? "I thought you moved on without me." She says in disbelief.
"We tried for like, one day, before we gave up and just accepted that we wanted you back,," Zoey says in all honesty. "We don't wanna leave you, Mira."
"Just like our tattoos, you left a mark on us forever. Zoey and I are loyal to each other, and we would love to extend that loyalty to you…If you want." Rumi shyly plays with her braid with a soft blush to her cheeks.
"We promise we're never going to leave you." Zoey softly nods.
"And there's nothing you can do to change that," Rumi adds.
Zoey turns to Rumi with a frown. "That sounded a bit weird."
Rumi hums. "It did, didn't it?"
"You sounded like a stalker."
"I didn't mean it like that."
"You might wanna clarify."
Rumi turns to Mira. "Mira, I—"
Both girls turn quiet as Mira's smile turns into a giggle, which turns into a chuckle, and she's fully belly laughing with the box in her arms. Tears trail down her face, but they seem to be of happiness. Rumi and Zoey exchange confused looks, but they can't help but smile as well.
"Sorry, I just—" Mira hiccups laughs as she tries to speak. "I just can't believe this is happening. I mean…I do believe you, I-I know you mean it, but this is all so sudden and I'm…" Her face is a mix of smiles and sobs, an overwhelming feeling of happiness fighting back a doubt she's carried for too long. "I didn't expect all of this when I came to get my package."
"Oh, we did kind of ambush you with this talk, sorry." Rumi scratches her nape, embarrassed.
"You don't have to answer right now, Mimi," Zoey says, dangling her feet while sitting on the counter. "Take all the time you want."
Mira softly nods. Puddles of tears spot the whole surface of the cardboard in her arms; whatever is inside, she hopes it's not made out of paper. She takes a deep breath to recompose herself from the sobbing mess she was a few seconds ago, and looks back at Zoey and Rumi with a determined look. "We'll talk later."
"You know where to find us," Rumi says.
"And we're not going anywhere," Zoey agrees.
Friday night, 8PM, second floor of Huntrix Hall, class 205. The place is dead silent. Zoey uses the flashlight of her phone to guide her and Rumi inside the building, which is surprisingly open.
"You think she lockpicked the doors?" Zoey asks as they walk through the empty hallways.
"Mira wouldn't do that," Rumi responds, though she's sure Huntrix Hall should've been closed, just like every other school building at this hour of the night. After the party at Saja Hall, police double-checks the locks every now and then.
"Maybe she stole the keys."
"That's not like Mira either."
"Maybe she entered through a window."
"That doesn't explain the open door."
"Maybe she opened it from the inside?"
Rumi frowns, considering the alternative. "That feels like something we should ask instead of jumping to conclusions."
They stop in front of class 205, and Zoey illuminates a paper sign taped to the door that says 'Private Board Games Session! Inform Password to enter.' In a beautiful cursive handwriting that Rumi immediately recognizes as Mira's calligraphy.
"Password? What password?" Zoey furrows her brows.
"Look over here." Rumi points to a small text at the corner of the page.
'Hint: It's the first game
we ever played together.'
Rumi and Zoey exchange looks and confidently speak in unison:
"Uno!"
The handle turns, and the door slowly opens as a voice behind it says, "Dos, Tres!"
The classroom is lit only by the fairy lights hung on the walls and atop the whiteboards, the dots of yellow glinting like fireflies in a breezy summer night. The projector screen is playing a video of a fireplace crackling with cozy flames, and the same video seems to be the source of the jazz music playing in the speakers. All the fixed seating organized in an auditorium-style semi-circle draws attention to the epicenter of the room, where on usual days Professor Baek would be lecturing. Tonight, however, there's a plaid picnic blanket spread out on the floor, bowls of chips and candy on top of it, flower petals on the floor surrounding it, piles of board games at its edges, and a cardboard box right at its center.
Mira's head pops out from behind the door, and she holds a shy smile on her face. "Welcome to the Board Games Club 2.0! For one night only, though." She adjusts her eyeglasses and gestures for them to come inside.
Zoey's the first one to enter, mouth agape and eyes wide-open. "Mira, you…Did you do this by yourself?"
Mira has her arms behind her back; the lights are too dim to highlight the blush on her face. "It's not much. The hardest part was convincing Professor Baek to give me the keys to enter the classroom, but he agreed quite fast after I said I'd help grade the final exams."
Rumi kneels on the picnic blanket, taking one of the board games in her hand, realizing something. "Mira…are these our board games?!"
Mira's holding back a big smile, her lips quivering and almost giving in. "They are. I told the police they were mine, and since I already paid my fine, I got them back. But can I suggest we play something else…?"
Zoey trots to sit down next to Rumi, and Mira soon follows. She takes the cardboard box and begins to lift its side wings with no difficulty. Rumi and Zoey quickly realize that it's the package that arrived yesterday, but it seems like it's been opened beforehand, from the lack of tape and labels. Zoey and Rumi watch closely as Mira opens the box to reveal…
Wingspan, the board game, as well as a tiny red letter attached to it.
"Did your parents send you a board game?" Rumi asks, observing the Flycatcher bird on the cover of the box.
"I couldn't believe it either when I saw it, but here's what they said." She takes the red letter and begins to read it.
'Mira,
We're so proud to hear you got hired as a teaching assistant for Political Theory. You're on track to become an amazing diplomat and someday accompany me and your father on our future trips.
Sorry we haven't been able to come home in a while; we're currently attending a conference in Brussels, and flying back to South Korea would be troublesome. We're really happy to know you're making a place for yourself at University.
We were strolling around town and thought of you when we saw this board game at a shop window. Do you still like birds? This board game is all about them; maybe one of them looks like Sussie, remember him? You should gather your friends and play together. I'm sure they'll love it.
All the Best,
Mom and Dad.'
"That's kind of sweet, but they really haven't talked to you in a while, huh?" Zoey notes. "Do they not have cellphones or something?"
"They call me sometimes, but they act all high and mighty for hating the internet." Mira rolls her eyes. "They think they're better than everybody else for not having touch-screen phones."
Rumi giggles. "They'd get along great with my aunt. She's very stubborn with electronics."
"My dad calls me through Discord." Zoey comments. "Sometimes I think he's more online than I am."
Mira chuckles at their responses; to each their own, she guesses.
"When I opened this package last night, I thought I'd feel the usual explosive happiness I get when something from my parents arrives." She sighs deeply. "Sometimes I feel like a dog waiting for its owner to come back, wagging my tail at any sound or smell that reminds me of them. Doesn't matter what gift they got me, I just want confirmation that they know that I exist."
She opens the game box and begins to set the board and pieces.
"But weirdly enough, reading their letter wasn't the huge deal I thought it'd be. I barely felt anything, honestly. I can hardly recognize my mom's handwriting at this point."
She flips through the cards of the game, which are all beautiful drawings of birds. She holds one of them for longer than the others. The black-billed magpie.
"I know they mean well. I know they still care about me. But I think I'm tired of waiting to be recognized by the people that don't care about me in the same way I care about them."
She puts the card of her childhood pet back in the pile and begins to shuffle it in the way Rumi taught her.
"I'm still afraid of being abandoned. I still struggle with coming to terms with the fact that people leaving me is not my fault."
She deals the cards and tokens to each of them. She doesn't feel like crying. It's so relieving to say the things she's been feeling that sadness gently hugs every sentence.
"But I know I've changed because the moment I saw this board game, I didn't wish I had my parents to play it with me." She raises her chin and smiles brightly in a way that has Rumi and Zoey in a chokehold. "I thought of you two, and of finally having a game I can bring to our meetings."
With the game fully set up, she gives Rumi the instructions manual and offers Zoey a bowl of M&Ms. They both take her offers, giving her the gentlest smile she's ever seen.
"What I'm trying to say is…" She takes a deep breath, pressing her lips in nervousness. Her confidence suddenly vanishes, and Rumi and Zoey try not to giggle at seeing Mira turn into a blushing mess. She gives them an angry glare and they cover their mouths. "What I'm trying to say is…if you really mean the whole 'loyalty thing' from yesterday, and if you're really okay with putting up with my fears…"
She huffs a laugh from the way Zoey and Rumi are vibrating in excitement before she even finishes what she has to say.
"…Can I be your Player Three?"
"Miraaaa!!!" The setup of the board game completely messes up when Zoey jumps and hugs her so tight her face turns the color of her hair. She barely has any time to process before Rumi tackles her, and they all fall to the ground.
"Mira…" Rumi is fully bawling on her shoulder. "Of course you can. You've been our player three for months now."
Zoey's attached to her arm like a Lego piece, with no sign of moving anytime soon. She cries much softer than Rumi, but her tears wet Mira's skin in the same way. "You're such a nerd, asking to be our girlfriend like that."
She's not sure how she's able to move her arms under the crushing weight of two bodies, but she manages to put her hands on the back of each—the best hug she can give in that position. "I'm proud to be a nerd if it means we have more in common."
Zoey and Rumi both wail 'Miraaa' and keep crying on top of her. They don't give her a break, but she regains full control of her arms to hug them tight and pet their heads while lying down. She's only able to keep smiling because she cried herself to sleep after yesterday's conversation, but they wouldn't know that. She's just glad she's able to comfort them and finally touch them like she always wanted.
The video fireplace keeps on crackling, the jazz music softly playing, the sniffles slowly die down.
"Zo, Ru."
They both raise their heads from their respective positions, using her shoulders as pillows. Their faces are in different tones of red from all the crying.
"Since you two kind of destroyed the game setup I just made…" The Wingspan cards and tokens are spread all around, peppering the floor just like the flower petals. Mira can feel one of them below her leg. "…can we say you lost the game?"
"But we haven't even started—" Zoey tries to speak, but Rumi interrupts her.
"Technically, we were about to start, so I think we can say it was a loss."
"But nobody played."
"Zo," Rumi whispers. "I want to see where this goes."
"Oh. I see." Zoey nods, smugly grinning at Mira, as if she didn't just hear their entire conversation.
She rolls her eyes, the corner of her lips tugging upwards. "I was just going to propose a dare."
"Anything you want, Mimi," Zoey says.
She looks up to the ceiling and covers her face in embarrassment. "I dare you two to kiss m—hm!"
Mira doesn't get to finish as Rumi's too quick to steal her lips, and she fully melts onto the floor.
It feels so right.
She doesn't get to breathe after Rumi pulls away, as Zoey's hands are already on her face and her lips close on hers.
It tastes amazing.
Zoey's already turning towards Rumi after letting her go, and Rumi meets her in the middle for a kiss on top of Mira's chest.
Mira only watches—
She doesn't. Her hands caress their cheeks while they kiss, and the way they lean on her touch is a silent agreement that they don't want her to stop anytime soon.
When Zoey and Rumi pull back, Mira's hands fall under their chins, scratching as if they're two cats. Her cats.
What a novel feeling.
"Mimi…" Zoey's close to purring under her touch. "…You also lost."
"Did I?" She teasingly says.
"You did." Rumi has her eyes closed, fully enjoying the scratches.
"M'kay. What's my dare, then?"
"You have to say it," Zoey says.
"Say…?" Rumi thinks for a second, but she clocks it fast. "Oh, absolutely. You have to say it."
Mira furrows her brows, humming in thought. "Can I get a clue…?"
Zoey grins. "Three words. Two pronouns."
"One verb." Rumi finishes.
"I love you." The words curve with her smile, and they each kiss her on the cheeks for answering correctly.
"I love you two." Rumi lays her head back on her shoulder, hugging her right side.
"We love you too." Zoey nuzzles on her neck and hugs her left side. She extends a hand across Mira's chest towards Rumi, and they link hands in that position.
"So," Mira speaks. "Are you down for hanging out this weekend?"
"Really!?" Zoey squeaks in excitement. "Are we finally going on a date outside of a classroom?"
Mira giggles. "I just happen to have a tattoo appointment this Sunday, and I'd love to have some company."
Rumi's eyes go wide in surprise. "Wait, no way…"
"You said you're never leaving me, isn't that right? I just wanna make sure."
"Let's get matching piercings too!!" Zoey's sparkling as she speaks.
Rumi sighs. "Let's get her a ring first, Zo."
"Oh, right! We can leave that for Saturday."
While Zoey and Rumi make plans for the weekend, Mira lets her eyes fall shut and her consciousness drift. She could barely sleep last night, and has been awake organizing what she called the Board Games Club 2.0 date night since sunrise.
The floor's not very comfortable to sleep on, and she doesn't want to stop listening to Zoey and Rumi speak. But it's okay.
When she wakes up, they'll still be here for her.