Chapter Text
You’re absolutely mortified.
You don’t know what to do--scream, run away, bury your head in the sand, or immigrate to the North Pole under a new identity. Weirdly, even in this situation, you find yourself working out the semantics of living at the North Pole. You vaguely remember reading somewhere that one could technically never live at the Earth’s peak because of how much the ice kept moving about. You also remembered reading somewhere that the Canadian postal code for the North Pole was a very punny H0H 0H0. Maybe you could move to Canada.
Because, what else were you going to do when you had asked your crush out during your online class over the chat; but had forgotten to select ‘Message Privately’, and hit ‘Send to Everyone’ instead? Classic, dumbass mistake. The kind of mistake that you and your roommate would say that idiots make. But now it was you. You were the idiot.
And the professor had read your chat out loud, he had read it out loud and now everyone was looking at you, smiling, sniggering, waiting. You wanted to kick his face for doing that to you. Well, technically, he had read it because he thought a student had posted a question. But why did he have to read it out loud? You bury your face in your hands.
“This might be a long shot, but Huang Renjun, do you maybe wanna grab some coffee sometime?” he had read, his tone getting more quizzical the further he read on and also as realization had hit him. “Well, that’s certainly not a question for me, I can tell you that.” The professor was kind enough to joke. And while the students might have been dozing off before, it wouldn’t take a scientist to tell you that everyone was paying attention now.
Stupid, stupid, stupid.
It’s a complete 180 from how you’d been feeling 5 minutes ago when you had had a bout of reckless bravery. Part of it had to do with the pep talk your roommate had given you this morning.
“Listen, Y/N. You’re a junior now. You need to make a mistake, or two, or ten, because you don’t have much time left. What are you going to tell your kids? That you made it through college with a squeaky clean record? Disgusting.” she had actually gagged while the two of you split a very nutritious breakfast consisting of last night’s pizza.
“What am I supposed to do? Smoke up with the Mile Highs under the bleachers?” you had retorted very logically.
“Ew, no. Unless that’s your thing, then get it, I guess. What I’m saying is…” she had flicked your forehead “...get laid. You’re in college. You must have your eye on someone.”
And you had thought to yourself, ‘Of course I have my eye on someone.’ You had had your eye on him since the beginning of the semester before the school went into lockdown. Huang Renjun, the art major. Online class had only made having your eye on him easier because now, instead of sneaking glances at him, you had the luxury of zooming in on his window to just… stare at him the entire 90 minutes.
He was so cute. You would internally squeal at the fact that he dressed like such an art student and the fact that he had dyed his hair every possible color in this semester alone. You could also tell that he was different to most guys you knew. He just seemed like the introspective, intelligent type. But while you did not know his mind yet, you would ogle at the tall bridge of his nose and the delicate curve of his mouth and the perfect half-moon shape of his eyes.
Those pretty eyes were wide in surprise now as the professor read your question out.
“Well, Mr. Huang Renjun, are you going to put the young lady out of her misery?” The professor asks jokingly and you think you might die. This right here was enough fodder to make you a social outlaw for the rest of the year.
But what you didn’t expect was that Renjun would unmute himself and very nonchalantly say “Yeah, sure. I could grab a cup of coffee with Y/N.” which gets him a round of applause from many windows and hoots from others. Fuck college students and their dramatic antics, but also, what the fuck just happened?
Your bout of stupid bravery had led to the most mortifying moment of your life. But your crush had said yes to going out with you, so maybe you would be able to sleep well tonight after all.
“Hey, right on, man.” Donghyuck thumps Renjun’s back before he’s even gotten the chance to shut his laptop. “My boy’s a player.”
“Don’t you have a frat to live in? Why are you always over at my house?” Renjun aims a kick at Donghyuck, which he skillfully dodges.
“You guys have way better WiFi. But cut the crap, I didn’t know you and Y/N L/N were a thing.” Donghyuck says, making himself at home as he spreads himself over the bunk bed Renjun shared with his roommate.
“Could you not put your dirty feet on there? But no, we aren’t a thing. I don’t even know her.” Renjun replies, stretching on his wheelie chair.
“You were pretty quick to say yes, though.” Donghyuck smirks, flipping Jisung’s pillow in his hands.
“Come on, man. It would’ve been cruel to turn the poor girl down in front of everyone. I’m just gonna let her down easy when I see her in person.” Rejun replies, frowning at his friend as if appalled by his emotional maturity… or lack thereof.
“Why, though? She’s cute. She’s not Yoo Jimin sexy, but she’s cute and she literally asked you out in front of everyone, which is hot as fuck in my book.” Donghyuck says carelessly.
Renjun grimaces. He really wished his friends would stop mentioning Yoo Jimin every time they saw you. She had moved on… they needed to move on, too, he thinks.
“Not really my type.” Renjun dismisses his friend and gets up to make himself some tea.
“Okay, but get this.” Donghyuck sits up suddenly. “Do you even know who she is?” he asks and Renjun scoffs. Trust his friend to have the dirt on everyone.
“No. Should I?” Renjun replies to humor him.
“Dude, remember Kim Doyoung? The legend from our frat?” Donghyuck looks at Renjun and pauses for dramatic effect. “She’s his sister.”
Renjun looks at his friend, doing everything in his power not to roll his eyes at him. “And?” he asks. He was pretending to care but his patience was wearing thin.
“Dude, it’s literally Kim Doyoung? Of Midnight Arthouse? Haven’t you been busting your ass this entire year trying to get them to feature your work?”
That catches Renjun’s attention. He pauses… he didn’t know that. Maybe he had to pay attention to the boy in front of him sometimes.
“Well?” Donghyuck raises his eyebrows at him repeatedly, as if to say ‘Didn’t expect that, did’ja?’
Renjun plays along, wears a shocked expression on his face and says, “You’re saying Kim Doyoung… the Kim Doyoung, highest paid painter in the country right now... was a frat boy?” The smart remark makes Donghyuck chuck the pillow he’s holding at Renjun, spilling his tea just a bit. Renjun takes no time in chucking it right back at his face. But it’s not enough gratification, so Renjun grabs the pillow and aims for his friend’s head again.
“Stop missing the point! Listen, all I’m saying is that you’ve got a pretty good chance here.” Donghyuck says as he places his forearm in front of his face to protect himself from Renjun’s ongoing attacks. “You know hard work and talent isn’t really enough in this country,” he continues as Renjun manages a couple of hits with the pillow to his head. “You gotta have connections, know the right people. All I’m saying is…” he keeps talking while his hot-headed friend gets his fill of revenge “... the best connections are always made between the sheets. And maybe you need to get laid, because this right here…” he gets up and grabs the pillow away from his friend's hand “... this is sexual frustration as bad as I’ve ever seen it. Phew.” he finishes, shaking his head, as if trying to steady himself after all the blows.
“I’m not going to sleep with this poor girl just to get to her brother.” Renjun says, his tone irritable because seriously, his friend had zero tact. Sometimes, he couldn’t understand the 127 house in the slightest and was happy being as far away from them as possible.
“Dude, she’s the one who asked you out. In front of everyone. On record.” Donghyuck raises his eyebrows and for once, Renjun can tell he’s being real.
He’s got him there. Renjun had to admit that when he wasn’t fucking around, his unlikely friend made a lot of sense.
He was right: Renjun had spent a good part of this year with one goal in mind: to get Midnight Arthouse to showcase his work. Every year, the company chose rookie artists from around the country and displayed their work in their annual exhibition. The company might have been new-ish but it had launched so many viral artists that no one could pretend to ignore them anymore. They would somehow find your regular, everyday struggling artists and feature them in these exhibitions. The kind of artists that were scraping by one day and then boom: people were lining up to pay them a shit tonne of money the very next day.
Renjun could list so many names off the cuff that had gotten that viral exposure from them. But what made him most bitter was the fact that he even knew some of those artists--like Lee Chittaphon, for example (or Ten, as he was going by these days, Renjun thinks with a pang of jealousy). That man was so down in the dumps that he had actually crashed over at Renjun’s for a while because he had nowhere else to go. So, it was annoying how he suddenly shot up the way he did because his work was displayed at Midnight fucking Arthouse.
Renjun resented all these people, but not only because he was jealous. No, it went way beyond that. Renjun wasn’t any less talented than them… his professors had dubbed him “golden hands” because of how gifted he was (if he had to toot his own horn). But he resented them because all these fuckers knew the right people. As much as it annoyed Renjun to admit it, Donghyuck was right. Talent and hardwork didn’t matter in this darned country--it all boiled down to having the right connections.
Donghyuck sits there wearing a smug expression on his face, biting the inside of his cheek as he watches the inner turmoil register all over his friend’s expressions. “You know I’m right, brother. Look, I’m not saying you should like… sleep with her and then force her to introduce you to her brother. I’m just saying people like us? We gotta work with what we got, man. We’re not the Kim Doyoungs or Zhong Chenles of the world. We don’t get opportunities on a silver platter. But we can make use of those privileged fuckers sometimes.” Donghyuck says and for once, Renjun is silenced. His friend shoots him with annoying finger guns.
Thankfully, before Renjun could lunge at him again, they are interrupted by another boy.
“Are you guys done with class? Jisung made ramyeon. Come eat.” Rejun’s housemate says to the two of them.
Donghyuck looks at the intruding boy with wide eyes, clutching his heart “Lee Jeno! You let Jisung cook? He could’ve burned the house down! But yes, I’m gonna have that ramyeon with you all because guess what happened in class?”
Renjun had spent the next week avoiding the subject altogether. He ignored most of Donghyuck’s invasive texts and tried to focus on his work. But try as he might, curiosity had gotten the better of him a few times. One night, when Jisung was fast asleep in the lower bunk, Renjun had scrolled through Instagram and stalked you a little bit. Though he tried to look at your pictures with the least amount of investment possible, he couldn’t help but learn a few things about you, simply by looking at your feed.
A couple of scrolls confirmed that Kim Doyoung was, in fact, your older brother. You didn’t have any other siblings on your feed. You were a business major. You lived in a huge ass apartment with a senior, Kim Yerim. You had a cat named Galbi. Your parents were absolutely loaded. You had done some volunteer work in Indonesia.
Renjun can’t help but scoff at your picture with a bunch of young children at an Indonesian school. Of course, rich people had to make themselves look charitable, he thinks. It was almost part of their job description.
You were okay looking, he supposed as he scrolled through the rest of your feed. But of course you had to be. He had never seen an ugly rich person. Maybe their rich parents got work done on their faces before letting them out into the world.
Somehow, Renjun’s bitter thoughts took him to another corner of Instagram, one he had promised himself he would never revisit. And as soon as he did, he wished he hadn’t because Yoo Jimin’s latest post is a picture of her sat on the lap of her older boyfriend with the caption “Happy 100 days, bae.”
She looked as beautiful as ever, but what had Renjun expected? That she would stop being perfect once they had broken up? Or that maybe he would stop seeing her as the most beautiful woman on the planet once she had broken his heart?
Nothing in this world was fair. Rich people only made friends with other rich people. Beautiful people only made friends with other beautiful people. And this system was held tight through more rich and beautiful connections, ensuring that no one on the outside ever even got a shot. The only way to get through to the top tier was by becoming rich and successful yourself. Like Lee Chittapon had done. But Renjun. He was neither rich, nor successful, nor beautiful.
Why the fuck had he chosen this route, anyway? His parents had been right--he should’ve studied medicine or engineering like they wanted and set himself on the path to make a lot of money. But he wanted to be an artist. What a utopian, senseless, dumbass dream that turned out to be. Because now, his parents had stopped supporting him. He had spoken to his mother maybe twice in the past year. His father wouldn’t speak to him at all.
Relationships and family and love… Renjun had discovered that all of that meant fuckall because all it ever boiled down to was money. His parents were a prime example. When they were down in the dumps, all he could remember was how they fought. And when they started doing slightly better financially, their relationship healed. Like bank notes held their wounds together like bandaid. It was a sick system, but who was Renjun kidding? It was how this world operated.
Renjun knew that the only way he could get back to his mother, his father, Yoo fucking Jimin and everyone who had ever looked down on him was if he became as successful an artist as motherfucking Kim Doyoung.
Suddenly, his mind was made up. He hit the exit on Yoo Jimin’s page and went back to yours, wasting no time in tapping on that inviting ‘Message’ button.
“So, when are we going out for that coffee?” he tapped send.
Being a college junior in the middle of a global pandemic was hard. Not only were you never sure when you’d go into lockdown next, the professors weren’t taking it any easier on you. If you were stressed, fatigued or anxious, it would make total sense, given the situation. But you weren’t any of those things. In fact, it was quite the opposite.
Because right now, you were wearing the biggest grin on your face as you sat across your crush for a coffee date. You soaked in the sun and the cute boy sitting in front of you and all you could do was smile stupidly.
“Hey, thanks a lot for doing this. I know it was a lot of pressure, but… I’m glad you said yes.” You tell him and he gives you a kind smile.
“I mean, you really did put me on the spot there. Asking me in front of everyone in the middle of a lecture.” he teases over his cup.
“What can I say. That’s just my style. I had to make sure you couldn’t say no.” You tease right back.
He pauses and sets his cup down “What, for real?”
“Nope. Was going to send the message privately but ended up hitting ‘Send to Everyone.’” you fess up.
Renjun laughs “Now that’s what my friend would call a dumbass mistake.”
“Your friend and mine have that in common.” You laugh back. “But, I mean. It was memorable. You have to give me that.”
“Oh, yeah. For sure. It’s a story we’ll tell our grandchildren.” he smiles.
You stupidly blush, not because of what he said but because what he said reminded you of the conversation you had had with your roommate right before you’d left.
“Okay, I’ve turned on your live location and shared it with the girls so we can all track you. Just remember, if you have a funny feeling through any of it, call us right away. I’m not even kidding. Minjeong’s going to be in the next building so she’ll come get you.” she had gone on like a mother hen.
“Yeri, please. I’ll be fine. And you’re the one who encouraged me to date, anyway.” you had reminded her as you had picked up your purse and gotten ready to head out. She had walked you to the door, then stroked your head.
“Uhhh, they grow up so fast.” she had pretended to be verklempt, then added “Oh, and one more thing.” she had reached into her own bag and pulled out a string of something that looked like sachets attached together. “Just in case things escalate, safety first!”
“Yeri! Oh my God. I am not going to sleep with him! We’re literally only going out for coffee.” you had shrieked at her as she had started stuffing the condoms in your purse.
“My sweet summer child, you’ll have no idea when the coffee turns to ramyeon. And when that happens, boys are never prepared.” She had told you like a wiseacre, then had spanked you on the ass, making you jump. She was as firm handed as ever. “Go get em, tiger.”
You had mock roared at her and then you were out the door before she could put any other ideas in your head. Giving you condoms on your first date, who did she think you were?
“What would you tell them? Hey kids, your grandmother asked me out during an online class in the course of a global pandemic? That’s a story for the ages.” you say to Renjun now and hide behind your coffee cup.
His half moon eyes reduce in size as he gives you a genuine smile “Love in the time of Corona. I should make a painting about it.”
“If that painting becomes a national treasure, I’m totally getting a cut. It was my idea, after all.” you pout at him.
“Spoken like a business major.” he snipes back and you both grin at each other. Suddenly, all your nervousness from the week earlier starts to seem silly. Renjun may have looked intimidating, but talking to him was so easy! What had you been nervous about?
“So, art major Huang Renjun. Tell me more about yourself.” You say, resting your chin on your hand.
“Hmm… I never really know how to answer that question. What do you wanna know about me?” He says, leaning back in his chair.
“Well… what kind of art do you do? Sorry, I’m not familiar with artist lingo, but you know what I mean, yes?” you make an apologetic face.
“Isn’t your brother an artist?” Renjun muses but almost too quickly adds, “But I’m a painter. Oil on canvas is my specialty.”
“That’s so cool! I wanna look at your stuff one day. How come you don’t post anything about it on Instagram? You’re a very difficult man to stalk.” you smile.
Renjun smiles back, looking away whilst fixing his glasses over the bridge of his nose. “I don’t know. I don’t know how to explain it.”
“Is it like… a privacy thing? You like holding your work close to your heart?” you try to understand.
“No… no, it’s not that.” Renjun says, playing around with a paper napkin as if looking for something to do with his hands.
“I’m sorry for pushing it. You don’t have to answer it if you don’t want to.” you say as you watch the boy deep in thought, as if he doesn’t know what to say or how much to say.
“I guess it’s just like... putting my work on Instagram feels disrespectful? To my work? Like I don’t think it belongs there like it’s free real estate, you know? It belongs somewhere better?” he looks up at you and adds “Does that even make sense?”
“Of course it does. You think your work has more value than that. I get that. So, what’s the end goal? What’s that ‘somewhere better’?” you ask him, genuinely interested.
He peeks at you from between his lashes, smiles and says “Midnight Arthouse.”
You sit back in your seat and roll your eyes “You can do better than Midnight Arthouse.”
“How do you know? You haven’t even seen my work.” Renjun quips back and sets the paper napkin he’d been playing with back on the table. It has skillfully been turned into an origami crane.
“I don’t know. I just have a feeling about you. Also, I don’t think Midnight Arthouse is your place if you’re the kind to respect your work and keep it away from free real estate social media spaces. Because my brother jumps at any sns viral star he can get his hands on.” you roll your eyes again. You really had to stop doing that, especially in front of your crush, and especially when you guys were on your first date.
“Even so. That’s the dream, I guess.” Renjun shrugs his shoulders.
You sigh “Oh, Huang Renjun. If only you knew that you were worth bigger dreams.” You can’t believe your crush’s life aim is to get into your brother’s dumbass company. You lived in his shadow, even in your love life.
Renjun gives you an amused smile “Am I? You don’t even know me.”
“That’s true. I don’t know, but like I said, I have a feeling about you. But for now, I’m afraid our date must come to an end because I have class soon.” you tell him.
“Huh?” Renjun sits up straight and raises his eyebrows “This was a date?” he asks, surprised.
Your heart drops and your face heats up. Shit, shit, shit. Did he not think this was a date? Dammit, you should’ve been more clear, but you don’t even remember what you had replied to him in the DMs. “I, uh…” you begin.
“Do you think I’m that easy? No, no, no, no. Ms. Y/N L/N, you can’t buy my company with a mere cup of coffee. You’re gonna have to wine me and dine me.” he says and you feel relief wash over you. Phew. For a moment, you really thought this had been a bust for him, but it was just his sarcastic way of asking you out on a second date. You liked his style already.
“A coffee date doesn’t count as real a date to one Mr. Huang Renjun, now, huh?” you joke as you signal at the server to get you your check.
“Hey. I thought I was worth bigger dreams.” he throws your own line back at you and you think dammit. This boy has a quick wit and a sharp tongue. Somehow, that makes your crush on him grow stronger.
“Touché.” you reply as the server approaches you with the bill. Renjun grabs at it.
“I got it.” he says, pulling his wallet out from his pocket. You take the opportunity and grab the bill right back.
“No, I’m the one that asked you out, it’s on me.” you argue while Renjun tries to pry it away from your hands.
“No way. The man has to pay.”
“Didn’t think you were the traditional type.”
“I’m not. I’m just trying to woo you enough so you give me a better second date.”
“Okay, but this is still on me!” you say, holding down the bill with one hand and reaching into your purse with the other and pulling your wallet out, and finally, you feel Renjun’s grip on the bill loosen.
“Aha! I win! Huang Renjun, you’re gonna have to try way harder to beat me.” You say, looking up and grinning, but you’re met with the embarrassed faces of both him and the waiter. You follow their gaze to your hand that is holding your wallet... and just about die. Hanging from within your wallet’s flap is the longest strip of condoms you have ever seen in your life.
You were going to kill Yeri.
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