PROLOGUE,

OCTOBER 17, 2018.

Bae Yeojin knew better than to let strangers into her home — especially men like Kim Jiwoong.

To be fair, she couldn't recall anything from the past three hours, too drunk to even remember how she and the man standing behind her on her doorstep as she fumbled to find her house key even met. But his presence seemed familiar, so she thought nothing of it.

"I can't find it," Yeojin slurred, trying to fit all the keys into the doorknob, hoping that eventually her house key would appear.

"You can't find it?" Jiwoong repeated, looking over her shoulder. He was just as drunk as she was, if not more. "How could you forget your house key?"

"I didn't forget it," she said. "I simply don't have it." Yeojin groaned, finally giving up as she stuffed her keys into her pocket and sat down on the steps that led to her front door, letting her head rest in her palms. "I drank too much." Jiwoong looked down at her, following suit.

"Does this mean I'm not allowed inside your house?" Jiwoong asked, his arms propping him up as he leaned back. "Man, I really wanted to know what kind of place a hermit like you lived in."

"I am not a hermit."

"Hey," he began, clearing his throat. "We just came back from your first college party," Jiwoong said with a chuckle. "This is your second year here and you're— what, twenty?"

"That doesn't make me a hermit," she said, beginning to get annoyed with him. "What are you even doing here? Shouldn't you be back at that party looking for your next victim?"

Jiwoong scoffed, "The people I take home are not victims," he said. "They join me willingly."

"Gross."

"Says you."

"Whatever." Yeojin sighed, looking at Jiwoong, his gaze upward as he watched the streetlight above them flicker. "I mean, you're pretty attractive, you know," she said. "I can see why you get around."

"You make it sound like it's a bad thing," he said. "I haven't even slept with that many people. Most of them fall asleep before I can get them through the door."

"So you babysit?" she asked. "Is that what you're doing with me? Because I don't have my house key and refuse to sleep with you?"

"No," Jiwoong spoke. "I'm simply having a conversation with you because I think you're interesting. For an English major, that is."

"Interesting? Ugh, go home." Yeojin rolled her eyes, watching Jiwoong laugh. "Seriously, you might as well. I'll probably end up sleeping out here if my roommate doesn't come home."

"But I like talking to you," Jiwoong said. "I haven't talked to someone like this in a long time."

"Because you make out with them before they can get a word in?" Yeojin smiled when she saw the look Jiwoong was giving her. "Kidding," she said. "Fine, I'll allow you to join me for a night of sleeping on cold pavement. You'll find it's not as bad as it sounds."

"You've done this before?" he asked.

"Oh yeah," Yeojin said, nodding. "You should know I don't bring my key with me very often — just in case you ever want to hang out with me ever again."

"That's fine," he said. "We can always just go to my place."

"I don't want to sleep with you."

"That's not what I meant."

Kim Jiwoong found it odd how easy it was to talk to someone he'd only met a couple hours ago. He didn't even know why he was talking to her to begin with — perhaps it was the guilt of having spilled his drink all over her, staining the white fabric of her shirt. Maybe it was because she was still wearing his shirt as he sat next to her in a black tank top, the cool autumn breeze slowing beginning to gnaw at his skin the longer he remained outside. Or maybe it was because Bae Yeojin was so much more interesting than all the other girls he'd met before — girls who only wanted to party and get high, girls with no passion for anything besides winning a game of beer pong.

Jiwoong felt that whatever came out of Yeojin's mouth had a meaning behind it, that every word she spoke was important to her character. Whether it was insulting him and his "frowned-upon" ways or admiring him under the October moon.

"What's your favorite song?" Yeojin asked, her back on the pavement as she looked up at the night sky. "Like, of all time?"

"Why?"

"A person's favorite song says a lot about them," Yeojin said, resting her hands on her stomach. "I really like 'Starting Over'."

"And what does that say about you?" Jiwoong asked, turning his head just enough to get her in his peripheral vision.

"Probably that I'm a terrible person," she said, the alcohol beginning to wear off. Yeojin laid in silence, waiting for a reply from Jiwoong, but when she realized she wouldn't be getting one, she sighed. "You don't know this," she started, "but I think I'm a terrible person."

"You don't seem like one," he said.

"But that's because you don't know me," Yeojin said, sitting up. She looked at him, waiting for his eyes to meet hers before continuing. "You don't know the things I've done, just like I don't know what you've done — nor do I really care, for that matter. To me, you're just another guy I happened to bump into at a party, just another guy that I let walk me home way too late at night, just another guy that I lied to because I didn't want to sleep with them."

"What do you mean 'lied' to?" Jiwoong asked, his brows furrowing in confusion.

"Did you really think I'd leave my house without a key?" Yeojin asked. She sighed, "Look, what I'm saying is that I don't want to get to know you and you don't want to get to know me. We had a nice time, just talking and wasting time, but it's never going to go anywhere past that point because we'd probably end up hating each other. I can feel it."

"I don't think I could hate you," he said. "Not when you're being so honest to me."

"You will, because guys like Kim Jiwoong don't like girls like Bae Yeojin, and girls like Bae Yeojin hate guys like Kim Jiwoong."

Jiwoong stared at Yeojin, finally starting to sober up as he tried to wrap his head around her words. He bit the inside of his cheek, breaking eye contact as he looked down, exhaling. "Let me ask you something."

"What is it?"

"Why are you so confident that I won't like you?" he asked. "You don't know me either, you know. You don't know what I'm like besides what you've seen in the past couple of hours."

"I think it'd just be easier to live with myself if I didn't know who you were," she said. "I don't want to waste time on someone who only talked to me because they wanted to get laid."

"I already told you that's not why I'm here." Jiwoong rubbed the side of his face, sighing. "Do you have, like, a secret agenda against me?" he asked. "Do you hate me already just because I seem like a stereotypical college guy who sleeps with everyone they lay their eyes on? 'Cause if that's the case, that's pretty shallow of you."

"I just don't want to get hurt by you," she said. "You've been too nice to me for me to not think you wanted something from me."

"I don't want anything from you," Jiwoong said. "But if you want me to hate you, then I will. Do you want me to hate you?"

"Not necessarily."

"Then why are we even having this conversation?" Yeojin's lips formed a thin line as she avoided Jiwoong's eyes. "I don't care if you think you're a bad person. There doesn't have to be anything between us, you know," he said. "We can just be people that know each other and talk sometimes. Some would even say friends."

"Do you really want to be my friend?" she asked him, suddenly embarrassed.

"Of course I do. Who wouldn't want to be friends with someone as opinionated as you?" Yeojin scoffed and rolled her eyes, causing Jiwoong to crack a smile. "How about this?" He sat up straight, turning his body to fully face Yeojin as he crossed his legs beneath him. "I won't judge you and you won't judge me. We can be friends with no obligations to each other besides just wanting to hang out sometimes."

Yeojin looked at him, a look of hesitance visible on her face as she thought about it. Truthfully, she could use someone like Jiwoong in her life, someone who wouldn't judge her for the way she was, someone she could be herself around freely. They were already off to a bad start, anyway — how much worse could it possibly get?

"Okay," she agreed. "That works."

"Cool." Jiwoong held out his pinky.

Yeojin's brow raised. "What's that?"

"Pinky promise," he said. "Come on, don't tell me you've never made a pinky promise before."

"Of course I have. It just seems a bit childish."

"I thought we agreed not to judge each other."

"Right." Yeojin sighed, hooking her pinky with Jiwoong's, a confused look crossing her features. "Why's your pinky so cold?"

"I gave you my shirt," he said. "And this tank top isn't really doing much to shield me from the wind."

Yeojin had forgotten that she was wearing Jiwoong's shirt, her own shirt forgotten back at the party. "Oh." She looked down for a moment, using all the brainpower she had left to think of a solution. She then got up, taking her keys out of her pocket again and this time using her house key to open the front door. She looked back at Jiwoong, who continued to stare at her until she spoke up. "Aren't you gonna come inside?"

"Am I welcome?" Jiwoong asked.

"Yeah, friends are welcome."

"Alright then."

Jiwoong stood up and followed Yeojin inside, closing the door behind him. She threw her keys into a white bowl that sat on a table near the entrance, taking her shoes off and kicking them to the side. He did the same, except he set his shoes neatly in the corner. "I'll go change and give you your shirt back," she said, showing Jiwoong to her room. "You can sleep here, if you want." She paused as she searched her closet for a shirt she could change into, then turned around to look at him. "Just leave before the sun rises."

"Okay," he said, nodding as he took a seat on her bed. "What happens when the sun rises?"

"We'll both be bombarded with my roommate's questions as to why you're here and sleeping in my room," Yeojin said. Jiwoong made an 'o' with his mouth, making a mental note not to sleep in like he usually would. "I'll be right back." Yeojin left the room and closed the door behind her, leaving Jiwoong alone as he examined her room.

Bookshelves full of mostly Russian and Japanese classics — Dostoevsky being the most noticeable. A desk cluttered in loose notebook paper and frosted polaroids — all pictures of sceneries or other people, never of Yeojin herself. A box in the corner filled with aging notebooks, stacked on top of each other, neglected. Another box beside her bed filled with vinyl records, though she only had very few of them. A single pillow on her bed, thrown off to the side, barely used.

Bae Yeojin was interesting, to say the least. It was almost as if there was meaning in everything she did, everything she had. Jiwoong thought back to the conversation they'd had outside, wondering if she had truly meant what she'd said. Was she really that bad of a person? So bad to the point where she had to warn him? Jiwoong couldn't believe her — no, he didn't want to believe her.

But perhaps there was meaning in that, too.