The dare was simple. Stupid simple.
"Go tell that guy he's cute," Doha said, pointing across the orientation courtyard with a skewer of tteok still hanging from his mouth. "The one sitting alone."
Hana followed his finger to the bench near the ginkgo trees. A boy sat there with his knees apart, a notebook open on his lap, earbuds in. Wire-frame glasses. A hoodie that looked like he'd been wearing it for three days straight. He hadn't talked to anyone all morning. Not during the icebreakers. Not during the campus tour. Not even when the orientation leader had directly asked him a question and he'd answered with exactly four words.
I don't have one.
The question had been about hobbies.
"I'm not doing that," Hana said.
"You literally said you'd do any dare."
"I said I'd do any reasonable dare."
"It's reasonable. Walk over. Tell him he's cute. Walk back. Done."
Hana bit into her tteok and chewed slowly. The boy on the bench turned a page in his notebook. He had a pen tucked behind his ear, which was somehow the most old-fashioned thing she'd seen a person her age do.
The truth was, she'd already noticed him.
Not because he was cute, though he was, in a quiet, forgettable kind of way that she suspected wasn't actually forgettable at all. She'd noticed him because he didn't try. Everyone else at orientation had been performing the same exhausting dance. Laughing too loud. Exchanging KakaoTalk IDs they'd never use. Pretending to care about the dining hall options. She'd been doing it too. Smiling until her cheeks ached. Remembering names she'd forget by tomorrow. Being the version of herself that made rooms easier.
But that boy on the bench had just... sat down.
Like he'd decided the performance wasn't worth the ticket price.
She envied that. Hated it a little, too.
"Fine," she said.
Doha choked on his tteok. "Wait, for real?"
"You dared me."
"I didn't think you'd actually—"
But she was already walking. Tote bag bouncing against her hip, phone case catching the afternoon light. Twelve steps across the courtyard. She counted them because her brain needed something to do besides scream.
He looked up when her shadow crossed his notebook.
Close up, his eyes were darker than she expected. Almost black. The kind of eyes that didn't give anything away, not because they were empty but because whatever was behind them was being held very, very carefully.
"Hi," she said.
"Hi."
One word. No inflection. He didn't close his notebook or take out his earbuds. She could hear tinny music leaking from the left one. Something with piano.
"I'm Yoon Hana. Business Admin."
"Shin Jaemin. Computer Science."
She waited for him to say something else. He didn't. He just looked at her, patient and neutral, like she was a weather event he'd decided to let pass.
Just say it. Say the dare thing. Tell him he's cute. Walk back. Laugh about it with Doha. Done.
"You're cute," she said.
He blinked. Once.
"And I like you."
The second sentence came out without permission. It climbed up her throat and threw itself off the edge of her teeth before she could catch it. She heard it in the air between them, hanging there like something that couldn't be taken back.
Because it was true.
She hadn't known it was true until she said it, which was the worst possible way to find out.
Jaemin's pen fell off his ear. He caught it before it hit the ground, which was annoyingly smooth for someone who'd just been confessed to five seconds into a conversation. He looked at the pen. Looked at her. Pushed his glasses up with his index finger.
"Okay," he said.
Hana's brain stalled.
"Okay?"
"Okay."
"Okay like... you acknowledge what I said? Okay like you're processing? Okay like—"
"Okay like yes." He paused. His jaw did something tight that might have been the beginning of an expression, but it never fully arrived. "If you meant it."
"I just told you I like you and you said okay."
"What was I supposed to say?"
"I don't know! Something with more syllables?"
He looked at her for a long moment. Then the left side of his mouth moved. Not a smile. Not quite. Something smaller, like a door cracking open an inch.
"I noticed you too," he said. "During the icebreaker. You laughed at everyone's jokes even when they weren't funny. I thought that was..." He trailed off, looking at a spot just past her shoulder.
"You thought that was what?"
"Tiring." He met her eyes again. "For you. It looked tiring."
The courtyard noise faded. Someone was playing a speaker somewhere. Laughter from another group. The orientation leader calling for everyone to reconvene. All of it dropped to background static.
Nobody had ever said that to her before. Not her friends from high school. Not her mom. Not anyone. They'd all just accepted the performance as real and moved on.
This boy, who she'd known for ninety seconds, had looked at her once and seen the exhaustion underneath.
"It is," she said. Her voice came out smaller than she wanted. "Tiring."
He nodded like she'd confirmed something he'd already decided. Then he pulled the earbud out of his left ear and held it up.
"Do you want to sit?"
She sat.
His notebook was full of small, cramped code. Not for any class. Something he was building on his own. She didn't ask about it because he didn't offer, and because the music coming through the shared earbud was a Yiruma piece she hadn't heard in years and the ginkgo leaves above them were catching the light in a way that made everything feel held.
They sat there through the entire reconvening announcement. And the one after that. And the mildly annoyed third one. Someone from their group would come looking for them eventually. Doha would have questions. There would be a story she'd have to construct, something light and funny, oh my god you won't believe what happened, with the right amount of drama to make it entertaining.
But right now there was just the bench and the piano and the boy who said okay like it was the biggest word he knew.
Her phone buzzed in her bag.
She ignored it.
His notebook page fluttered in a breeze that smelled like campus grass and someone's ramyeon from the dorm across the path. He turned to a blank page. Wrote something small in the corner. Angled it so she could read it.
My hobbies are coding, walking, and listening to music. I lied earlier because I didn't want to explain them to forty strangers.
She laughed. Not the laugh she'd been using all day, the bright, round, perfect one that made everyone comfortable. This one was jagged, surprised out of her. It came through her nose first and then her mouth and it wasn't pretty at all.
He looked at her when she laughed like that.
Really looked.
The door cracked open another inch.
"We should probably go back," she said.
"Probably."
Neither of them moved.
"So," she said. "Are we... what are we?"
"You confessed. I said okay. I think that makes us dating."
"You can't just logic your way through this."
"I just did."
"That's not how it works."
"Then how does it work?"
She opened her mouth. Closed it. Opened it again.
"I don't actually know," she admitted. "I've never done this before."
"Me neither."
"You said okay like you get confessions every Tuesday."
"I don't. That's why I said okay. I didn't have a better response prepared."
She stared at him. He stared back. Neutral, steady, unbothered. Except his ears were red. She could see it now, just above where the earbud wire draped. Both ears, burning crimson against his pale skin.
Oh.
He wasn't calm. He was terrified and holding completely still, the way some animals do when they don't know if something is a threat or not.
She decided right then that she was going to make those ears turn red as often as possible.
"Give me your phone," she said.
He handed it over without asking why. No lock screen. His wallpaper was the default one.
She added herself as a contact. Typed her name with a sun emoji next to it. Texted herself from his phone so she'd have his number too.
When she handed it back, their fingers touched. Brief. Warm. His hand was bigger than she expected. The knuckle of his index finger had a callus from holding a pen too hard.
"I'll text you tonight," she said.
"Okay."
"You have to stop saying that."
"What should I say instead?"
"Literally anything with more than two syllables."
He thought about it. Genuinely considered it, the way she was starting to understand he considered everything.
"I'll be waiting," he said.
Three words. Six syllables. And his ears went even redder.
She walked back to Doha on legs that didn't feel entirely solid. The courtyard was louder than before, or maybe she'd just forgotten what volume felt like. Doha was exactly where she'd left him, skewer finished, eyes wide.
"So?" he said. "Did you do it?"
"Yeah."
"And?"
She sat down next to him. Pulled out her phone. His contact was there. Shin Jaemin. No emoji. Full punctuation in the single text he'd sent to confirm the number.
This is Shin Jaemin.
Four words. Period at the end.
She was in so much trouble.
"Hana." Doha leaned in. "What happened? Why do you look like that?"
"Like what?"
"Like you swallowed something alive."
She locked her phone. Her heart was doing something fast and irregular, the kind of rhythm that ruins songs and starts them.
"I think I have a boyfriend," she said.
Doha's tteok skewer clattered to the ground.
Her phone buzzed. One new message.
She didn't open it yet. She held the phone against her chest and felt it buzz a second time, and she thought about a boy who said okay and had red ears and saw through her on the very first try.
The second buzz was longer. A paragraph, maybe.
She'd open it later. When she could breathe.